
Class 3Y&3S 

Book. l_E3 

CqpyrightT^? 



CfCSEXKIGHT BEPOSHV 



BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE SOCIAL ENGINEER 

r Crown 8vo, net, $1.50 

SOCIAL ASPECTS OF RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS 

12mo, net, 75 cents 

THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

12mo, net, 75 cents 



The Rural Church 
Serving the Community 



BY 

EDWIN L. EARP 

Professor of Sociology, Drew Theological Seminary 
Madison, New Jersey 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyrigbt, 1918, by 
EDWIN L. EARP 



AUG 22 19(8 



©CLA501590 



r 

r 

v 

1 



DEDICATED 

TO THE 

MEMORY OF MY BROTHER 

N. B. (KIRK) EARP 

THE LAST OF FIVE BROTHERS 

ON THE OLD HOMESTEAD 

THE FIRST OF THE FIVE 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE 13 

CHAPTER I 

COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP 15 

I. The Need of Spiritual Leadership in the Open 

Country 16 

II. The Rural Life Movement Becoming Organized 18 

III. Rural Folk Becoming Class Conscious 19 

IV. The Shifting of Rural Population 23 

V. Spiritual Leadership 24 

CHAPTER II 

THE RURAL SOCIAL SURVEY 26 

I. How to Proceed to Make a Social Survey of a 

Rural Church Community 27 

II. What the Rural Survey Should Include 29 

III. Charting of the Facts to Suit Your Program. . 31 

IV. A Program of Work 32 

V. How to Carry Out the Program 32 

CHAPTER III 

THE DESTRUCTIVE FORCES IN A COUNTRY 

COMMUNITY 34 

I. Isolation — Individualism — Lack of Acquaint- 
anceship 36 

II. Lack of Cooperation 37 

III. Waste of Potential Leadership 38 

IV. Unscientific Management of Farm Life 39 

V. Absentee Land Ownership and Tenantry 40 

7 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

ECONOMIC PROSPERITY, THE BASIS OF A 
VIGOROUS COMMUNITY CHURCH LIFE 42 

I. The Primary or Fundamental Economic Factors 42 

1. Productive Soil 42 

2. Adequate Farm Labor 44 

3. Available Financial Resources 45 

II. Secondary Economic Factors 46 

1. Production of Raw Materials 46 

2. Conservation of Farm Products 46 

3. Distribution or Marketing of Farm Products . 47 
III. Psychological Factors 48 

1. The Mental Attitudes of People 48 

2. Team Work 49 

CHAPTER V 

THE RURAL CHURCH SERVING A COMMU- 
NITY 51 

I. The Church Serving the Community 54 

1. An Attractive Force 54 

2. A Saving Agency 55 

3. Legitimate Forms of Social Service 56 

II. The Social-Center Parish Plan 58 

1. The Plan 60 

(1) The Social Survey. 

(2) The Chart or Map. 

(3) A Program of Work. 

(4) A Staff of Workers. 

2. Its Value as a Socializing Agency 64 

(1) Socializing a Community in Conscious- 

ness. 

(2) Socializing a Community in Activity. 

3. How the Plan Can Be Worked 66 

(1) The Leader. 

(2) Financial Support. 

(3) Policy of Administration. 
, (4) Cooperation. 

8 



\ 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VI 

THE OVERHEAD ORGANIZATION OF THE 

V COUNTRY CHURCH 70 

> I. Cooperative Overhead Intervention 72 

II. A Definite Program for the Rural Community 75 
III. A Definite Policy for Rural Communities. ... 79 

CHAPTER VII 

THE TRAINING OF RURAL MINISTERS 82 

I. Rural Ministers Classified 83 

II. Methods of Training the Rural Ministry .... 84 

III. Graduate Fellowships in Rural Church 

Fields 87 

IV. Additional Qualifications Needed 91 

CHAPTER VIII 

TEAM WORK FOR THE RURAL COMMUNITY. . . . 95 

I. The Essentials of Team Organization 96 

1. The Question of Ability 96 

2. The Basis of Your Project 96 

3. The Essentials in Team Play 97 

II. How to Organize Team Work for the Com- 
munity 98 

1. Theological Extension 98 

2. Examples of Team Work 99 

3. Social Nature of Conduct 101 

4. Specific Tasks for Team Work 101 

CHAPTER IX 

LOCAL RURAL INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR 

RESPONSIBILITY TO THE COMMUNITY 103 

I. What Is a Rural Community? 105 

1. Homes 105 

2. Neighborhoods 105 

3. The Community 106 

9 



CONTENTS 

II. When Is a Community a Community? 108 

III. Social Rural Institutions that have Respon- 

sibility to the Community 109 

1. The Rural Home — Its Social Function Ill 

2. The Rural School 112 

3. The Church and Sunday School 114 

4. The Christian Associations 115 

5. Farmers' Clubs and Like Organizations 116 

IV. Responsibility of Local Rural Institutions 

to the Community 117 

CHAPTER X 

THE NEXT STEP IN THE RURAL LIFE MOVE- 
MENT 119 

I. Previous Steps in the Rural Life Movement. 120 

1. Scientific Farm Production 120 

2. The Popular Political Phase 121 

3. The Commercial Social Phase .121 

II. The Next Step 123 

1. "Rural Social Engineering" 123 

2. Planks for Its Footing 124 

(1) Efficiency in Farm Production. 

(2) Cooperative Farm Marketing. 

(3) Rural Credits and Banking. 

(4) Reorganization of Farm Household. 

(5) Better School Organization. 

(6) A Reorganized Country Church. 

III. How Can We Take This Next Step? 126 

CHAPTER XI 

THE CONSERVATION OF BOY LIFE IN THE 

OPEN COUNTRY 129 

I. The Problem of Conservation 129 

1. Land 129 

2. Forests 129 

3. Water Power 130 

4. Mineral Resources 130 

5. Boy Life in the Open Country 130 

10 



CONTENTS 

II. A Citizen in the Making 131 

III. The Currents of Human Desire 132 

IV. Chief Factors in the Conservation of Boy 

Life 133 

1. Provisional Measures 134 

2. Preventive Measures 134 

3. Vision and Vitality Needed 135 

CHAPTER XII 

THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES OF 

THE RURAL LIFE MOVEMENT 136 

I. What Has Been Achieved 136 

II. Where We Need to Stress our Rural Activi- 
ties in the Next Decade 138 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 

INDEX 143 



11 



PREFACE 

There is a growing conviction in the 
minds of Christian leaders to-day that the 
country church, to succeed as an integral 
part of the Rural Life Movement, must be 
organized and directed on the basis of service 
to the whole community. In the training of 
ministers and rural leaders in other profes- 
sions this fact is being emphasized by schools 
and colleges of agriculture, denominational 
colleges and theological seminaries. It is as- 
sumed by the writer that the chief function 
of the church is to acquaint the people with 
God, and teach them the way of God as re- 
vealed in his word and works, and train them 
in Christian service. The point of emphasis, 
therefore, is that of service for the commu- 
nity and the spiritualizing of all the neces- 
sary and life-giving activities of the people 
of the countryside. 

To fulfill this function the country church 
must be more than a preaching place for an 
absentee minister ; it must be a social center 
for the life of the community as a whole, for 
all the people in some sense at least through 
its program of work as well as worship. 

13 



PREFACE 

In the various chapters here presented the 
writer has treated those essential factors 
that combine to make a community-serving 
church in the open country and rural town 
or village. 

The Social-Center Parish Plan has been 
kept in view throughout this little volume be- 
cause it is a workable plan for the church 
that seriously undertakes to serve the needs 
of our modern rural population. 

In a former work on The Rural Church 
Movement the author gave a general view of 
the country church as a factor in the Rural 
Life movement. In this volume the more 
specific plans for community service are pre- 
sented. It is designed to serve not only as a 
text for the ministerial student in the college 
and theological seminary, but also as a guide 
to the larger number of rural workers inter- 
ested in the development of our new rural 
civilization through practical methods of 
Christian service in any community where 
real needs have been expressed and resources 
for community building have been discov- 
ered. Edwin L. Earp. 

Madison, New Jersey. 



14 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 



CHAPTER I 
COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP 

The country church to-day is recognized 
by all of our leading State agricultural col- 
leges, as well as by the Federal Department 
of Agriculture, as an economic and social 
force in solving our modern problems of 
rural life. In every conference on rural 
leadership and problems of farmer folk held 
at our State institutions the country church 
is given a prominent place in the program. 
Rural church leaders are invited to discuss 
freely, with other leaders of the Rural Life 
movement, the problems of our ne^y rural 
civilization. 

In summer schools and conferences, in the 
winter short course, and Farm and Home 
Week the country church is given the most 
serious consideration. In the legislative 
assemblies of many of our States the country 
minister is frequently found among the 
leaders of reform legislation in the interests 
of the people who live in the open country. 

15 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

I. The Need of Spiritual Leadership 
in the Open Country 

It seems like a paradox to speak of the 
need of spiritual leadership in the open 
country, when as a matter of fact the coun- 
tryside is still furnishing about eighty-five 
per cent of the ministerial leadership of all 
the churches, including the cities, and when 
many of the leading laymen in the city 
churches were born and reared in the farm 
home or in the manse of the country parish. 

Yet it is a noteworthy fact that the men 
in charge of the supplying of rural churches 
with ministers are flooding the theological 
seminaries in these days with calls for men 
who can adequately fill the requirements for 
a modern country parish. And, while we are 
getting each year an increasing number of 
men in some of our theological schools to 
look to the rural community as a place of 
permanent life investment, yet I am frank 
to say that, in the denomination to which I 
belong, we cannot supply the demand from 
the seminaries and colleges, and must take 
men inadequately prepared for so important 
a field. And from what I can learn from 

16 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

rural leaders of other denominations the 
need with them is as great and as difficult to 
meet. 

It is not religion we need in the open 
country, but better religious leadership. It 
was in the open country that all the great 
ethnic faiths had their origin, and it is here 
that Jehovah has always revealed himself to 
the great prophets and lawgivers of all the 
ages. But it is also in the open country that 
religion takes on crude and sometimes un- 
reasonable and abnormal forms of mani- 
festation ; and because of these facts we have 
to-day the greater need of spiritual leader- 
ship in order to guard our young people 
from these excesses in religion and lead them 
in the development of intelligent Christian 
experience and religious social control. Un- 
less we keep up the standards of spiritual 
leadership in this great recruiting field for 
the ministry, I fear mothers and fathers of 
the countryside will cease to dedicate their 
sons, as did Hannah of old, to the service of 
God's house. We therefore need spiritual 
leadership that is intelligent, constructive, 
patient, wise, and is willing to endure as see- 
ing the invisible. 

17 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

The people who cultivate the soil must be 
led to view the land as a gift from God in 
trust for all the people, and made to feel the 
guilt of a national sin if the land is so de- 
pleted in f ertility that in a few more genera- 
tions we shall be unable to feed adequately 
our own people. This educational work is 
being done in part by the Department of 
Agricultural Extension, through the farm 
bureau and county agents; but these men 
cannot bring conviction to the consciences of 
men like the prophets of God, who can add a 
note of divine authority in saying, "Thus 
saith the Lord." "The earth is the Lord's, 
and the fullness thereof; the world, and they 
that dwell therein." 

II. The Rural Life Movement 
Becoming Organized 

The Rural Life movement is rapidly be- 
coming organized. The leadership of this 
movement must be mastered by the church 
or it will become fixed in its form before the 
church can mold the movement into the king- 
dom of God on earth. The Smith-Lever 
Agricultural Extension Act of May 8, 1914, 
provides a sum of money aggregating over 

18 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

four millions of dollars annually to be ex- 
pended among the States on the basis of the 
percentage of rural population, with the pro- 
viso that each State shall appropriate an 
equal sum, so that by 1920 there will be avail- 
able in a State like Ohio $350,000 annually; 
in Illinois, about $375,000. The purpose of 
this legislation is to carry the knowledge of 
scientific agriculture discovered in our ex- 
periment stations and colleges of agriculture 
to the home of the individual farmer. This 
will mean the employment of an army of 
men and women as farm agents, domestic 
science demonstrators, and secretaries and 
stenographers for office work. This gives 
the churches of the open country a great op- 
portunity for Christian leadership, for these 
persons must, to succeed, be rural-minded, 
and must secure the cooperation of the 
church in the local communities where their 
work is to be carried on. 

III. Rural Folk Becoming Class 
Conscious 

Rural folk are also becoming in a very 
definite sense class conscious, as we have re- 
cently learned from the milk strike in New 

19 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

York State and in New Jersey, and also 
from the political triumph of the Farmers' 
Union of North Dakota, where they elected 
the governor and the entire State Legis- 
lature. This movement is rapidly spreading 
to other central Western States. There 
seem to be in these class-conscious move- 
ments possibilities for evil as well as for good 
— a spirit of vindictiveness and a purpose to 
"get even" with the city and town popula- 
tion who furnish the middle men so sincerely 
hated by the modern farmer. 

Here is another need for spiritual leader- 
ship of a statesmanlike type, for it will be a 
bad thing for our rural civilization to have 
the country exploit the cities, as it has been 
an evil in the past for the cities to exploit the 
farmers. What we need is the development 
of social sympathy between all groups of our 
national population in order that there may 
result a spirit of cooperation and Christian 
brotherhood among all competitive organiza- 
tions of our national life. Unless the 
churches of to-day meet this urgent need of a 
spiritual leadership, our new rural civiliza- 
tion will become pagan rather than Chris- 
tian. 

20 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

Another fact of significance in the present 
rural situation is the growing number of col- 
lege-trained men and women who are taking 
up the work of rural reconstruction, not only 
in politics, rural legislation, rural education, 
and rural banking and credits, but also as 
actual scientific farmers and managers of 
rural industries and agricultural enterprises, 
such as dairying, gardening, fruit-growing, 
etc. This fact intensifies the need for a more 
intelligent and technical type of spiritual 
leadership in the rural church community. 

It has been said by one of our leading 
prophets of the Rural Church movement 
that men in the country support the church 
not out of their capital but out of their in- 
come — therefore the modern country church 
has got to be interested in the economic ques- 
tions of the people whom she serves or lose 
their support, as is now too often the case in 
communities where tenantry has taken the 
place of farm ownership. 

Another need for a new type of spiritual 
leadership in the open country has been dis- 
covered by the recent rural church surveys 
that have been made in various parts of the 
country, East, West, North and South, and 

21 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

in local situations of church interest. All 
reveal the need of cooperation and some 
form of federative action by all of the lead- 
ing denominations of the church in this 
country. 

The Ohio Rural Life Association in coop- 
eration with the Commission on Church and 
Country Life of the Federal Council of 
Churches has just published a brief of its 
survey of the country churches of the State 
of Ohio entitled "The Church Situation in 
Ohio." In this pamphlet the outstanding 
facts are "An over-supply of churches," "A 
lack of attendance," "An absentee ministry," 
"Divided effort of the ministry," "A demand 
for interchurch cooperation," "The growing 
menace of an emotional type of religion." 
These and other discouraging titles of para- 
graphs packed with known facts to prove the 
points taken show the growing need of a new 
type of spiritual leadership to bring the 
great denominations together upon some 
State and nation-wide policy of church co- 
operation in the rural church territory where 
destructive competition and an isolated indi- 
vidualism in religion have prevented the 
church as a whole from keeping pace with 

22 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

the reorganized life of our new rural civil- 
ization. 

IV. The Shifting of Rural Population 

The shifting of rural population under 
changes in ownership, tenantry, and farm 
labor, has made it impossible to maintain in 
many sections the strong denominational 
churches of the more homogeneous popula- 
tion periods. Hence we must modify our 
methods of church administration to meet 
the needs of these changing conditions. We 
therefore must get together upon a states- 
manlike policy of home missions in the coun- 
try fields if we hope to meet the situation. 

Dr. Ward Piatt, a few months before his 
death, gave expression to this warning to 
those who were slack in keeping pace with 
the Rural Life movement: "As prophets of 
the new century we do well to measure the 
enormous governmental push behind the 
farm and rural school that we may estimate 
the push necessary to save the country 
church from stranding — from being in the 
next ten years the most belated institution of 
the countryside." * 

1 Church and Country Life, page 72. 
23 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

V, Spikitual Leadership 

Where is this spiritual leadership to come 
from? The theological seminaries of the 
leading denominations have begun to train 
men for this field, and there will be an in- 
creasing number of strong young men from 
these centers of theological learning who will 
volunteer for life investment in this neg- 
lected home field of Christian work, when 
the facts of need are made known to them, 
and the call is made urgent from the point 
of need. But I have seen recently a demon- 
stration of what may be expected from an 
entirely different group of students — I 
mean the State colleges of agriculture. At 
Manhattan, Kansas State Agricultural Col- 
lege, February, 1917, in a little informal 
meeting of students in the room of the Chris- 
tian Association building near the campus, 
fifty-one young men and women signed a 
written pledge to invest their lives for Jesus 
Christ in the open country. This was a new 
student volunteer movement, not by a hay- 
stack as was the first movement for the for- 
eign field, but by a great State institution 
that is sending forth thousands of technically 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

trained young men and women to help build 
up a new rural civilization. And if we can 
get together and direct this new student vol- 
unteer movement as has been directed the 
first Student Volunteer Movement for the 
foreign field, we shall soon see our vast rural 
domain under the leadership of Christian 
forces that will master the new rural civiliza- 
tion for Jesus Christ, and furnish a stronger 
home base for the evangelization of the world 
in this generation. 



25 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



CHAPTER II 

THE RURAL SOCIAL SURVEY 

The rural social survey is of little value 
unless conducted by some one as director 
who has a definite purpose in view. It in- 
volves a plan of work after the facts have 
been secured — and to secure action the essen- 
tial facts of the program should be charted 
on the basis of the survey and set up for the 
education of the people of a community as 
to what ought to be. (I once saw a picture 
by Goldberg, the cartoonist, on the foolish 
search for a four-leaf clover. After search- 
ing an acre lot and exposing himself for a 
month or two, the young man in the cartoon 
finally found one, and when asked what he 
was going to do with it, remarked, "Search 
me I" ) So in the enthusiasm of a new move- 
ment one is apt to follow the lead of some 
one else and make a survey without any con- 
structive plan by which the facts may be used 
to help better the community where they are 
found. 

26 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

A social survey involves effort in com- 
munity building. The rural social survey 
involves the reconstruction of the life of the 
community. 

I. How to Proceed to Make a Social 

Survey of a Rural Church 

Community 

1. Outline the territory, or rural parish, by 
taking the natural center where the people 
go to church, high school, for trade, the doc- 
tor, and for amusement, such as base-ball, 
etc. Then begin by making a census of the 
homes that naturally turn to this center until 
you reach the farthest home on the road that 
turns to your village or community center, 
or, to put it in another way, until you reach 
the first home that turns the other way. A 
line drawn between the homes will mark the 
limits of your community boundaries. 

2. Then take a census of the organizations 
within the community, and the list of mem- 
bers of each for the purpose of comparing 
with your home census, so that you will be 
able to chart up the social activities of each 
family in the community. 

3. Chart or map out your results on sep- 

27 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

arate sheets, so that you can refer to them 
for information readily. For example, you 
may have first, a total Socialization Map, 
taking a list of all the organizations within 
the community as found in the organization 
census, and give a different seal of colored 
paper of suitable size to each organization. 
Second, you may make a "Tenant and 
Owner" Map of the farm homes of the com- 
munity, as well as the village or town ; third, 
you may also make a School Map; fourth, a 
Sunday School Map, etc.; fifth, Combina- 
tion Maps, on which one set of facts may be 
readily compared with other sets of facts. 
Professor C. J. Galpin 1 gives a list of pos- 
sible maps as follows : 

Newspaper Map. 

Community Events Map. 

Library Map. 

Homes with and without Children Map. 

Foreign Born Map. 

Hired Help Map. 

4. The following results should be ex- 
pected from your social survey: 

First, questions will be asked as to the 

1 Compare The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Com- 
munity, Research Bulletin No. 34, University of Wisconsin. 

28 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

value and use of such maps and charts, and 
the survey as a whole. 

Second, the socially isolated homes and 
the neglected parts of the community will 
be readily observed and questions will be 
asked as to why these homes have been 
neglected, or why these people do not attend 
church, or use the library, or become mem- 
bers of the community organizations, etc. 

Third, there will result further inquiry as 
to how these situations of neglect affect the 
social life of the entire community. It will 
bring the church face to face with the prob- 
lem as to the expenditure of its annual 
budgets, and the social organizations will 
have to give a reason for their existence 
where such neglected quarters are possible. 

Fourth, it will lead to the conviction that 
there may be lacking the social machinery in 
the community to effectively serve these neg- 
lected interests. 

II. What the Rural Survey Should 
Include 

It should include all the facts of a com- 
munity : 

1. Those that may be designated as the 
29 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

assets, or life-giving and community-serving 
resources. 

2. Those that may be termed liabilities, 
life-destroying or community-destroying 
factors. 

3. These factors may be classified in vari- 
ous ways to suit the convenience of the group 
making the survey. The survey should in- 
clude: (1) The geological facts of the re- 
gion, soil, rainfall, lay of the land, etc. ; these 
may be secured from the State Department, 
or from the national government. (2) The 
biological facts of the region, including the 
forms of life that are adaptable to the com- 
munity such as plant life and animal species. 
These facts can be secured from the Biolog- 
ical Survey of the State or national govern- 
ment. (3) The demographical facts — which 
include the facts about the people as to the 
races, age-classes, sex, and conjugal condi- 
tion, married, unmarried, etc. (4) The so- 
ciological facts such as relate to the needs, 
organizations, classes, antagonism, and con- 
flicts between groups — voluntary and pur- 
posive organizations and family relation- 
ships — close interbreeding by marriage of 
near relatives, or the addition of new groups 

30 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

by exogamy, and immigration. (5) Reli- 
gious facts such as the number of those who 
attend the places of worship, the various re- 
ligious preferences of families and individ- 
uals. Any of these may be left out, however, 
if not required for the plan of work you pro- 
pose to carry on in the community. 

Various schedules have already been pub- 
lished, but the best way is to secure a number 
of schedules and then make out your own to 
suit your plan. 

III. Charting of the Facts to Suit 
Your Program 

After a survey has been made and the 
facts checked up for errors and corrections, 
the facts should be placed upon charts and 
the community mapped upon such a scale 
that every member of the community can 
understand what the facts mean. 

It should not only mark out the present 
location of farmhouses, schools, stores, shops, 
churches, roads, streams, the best soils 
adapted for certain crops, but it should also 
include what ought to be the location of 
buildings, and where roads ought to be im- 
proved or new ones built, or graded, bridges 

31 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

required, and public improvements of all 
kinds secured. 

Striking contrasts of what ought to be and 
what is in rural life can be very easily and 
cheaply presented by paper and ink, by 
photographs and posters, and be made more 
convincing than the orations, essays, and 
sermons on the subject that are sometimes 
made. 

IV. A Program of Work 

The rural leader should outline such a 
plan of work that he will not only get specific 
things done in the community but will actu- 
ally get the young life of the community to 
function in the essentials of rural leadership 
and community building. 

It is useless to merely talk about the facts 
of a survey unless we mean to make use of 
them. Such a plan makes possible a pro- 
gram and performance. 

V. How to Carry Out the Program 

A staff of workers must be secured to 
carry out the program of work. This in- 
volves the work of the social engineer, who 
can select the types needed. You should 

m 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

seek to find or develop in the community a 
specialist in soils, one in plant pests and 
diseases, one in dairying and stock breeding, 
one on rural home-planning and one on 
health and sanitation ; one on recreation and 
amusement in rural communities, one on re- 
ligious education and adolescence, and one 
on any other important phase of community 
need brought out in the survey, and charted 
in your program. 



33 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



CHAPTER III 

THE DESTRUCTIVE FORCES 

IN A 

COUNTRY COMMUNITY 

We need in the first place to state what 
we mean by a destructive force in a rural 
community. It would be more scientific per- 
haps to speak of destructive agents rather 
than forces. For example, plant pests and 
diseases, epidemics among cattle and poultry 
or hogs and horses. 

In Bergen County, New Jersey, during 
the month of July, 1917, the potato crop was 
nearly ruined by a green plant louse, or 
aphid, which seemed to thrive on ordinary 
spraying material like arsenate of lead, 
pyrox, and Bordeaux mixture, while a good 
dose of nicotine mixed with whale oil soap, 
or ordinary washing soap, put them out of 
business, if you sprayed the vines on the 
underside of the leaves where the insects did 
their deadly work. Now, in a sense, you 
could speak of this pest as a destructive 

34 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

force — but in reality it was an agent that did 
serious damage to a food product in war 
time. 

Take another example: there is no doubt 
that in our richest farming States, like 
Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and the Dakotas, 
Indiana and Illinois, the soil is being robbed 
of its fertility, and the next generation will 
have to work harder to restore its productiv- 
ity. Of course the custom of the pioneer in 
plowing the life out of the soil was a good 
one: he was grappling with a mortgage he 
had incurred in clearing the land, stocking 
his farm, building his barns, and providing 
machinery and tools. The tenant to-day in 
that same section is confronted with a like 
problem, for he must plow the life out of the 
land to pay for two livings — one for the ab- 
sentee landowner and one for his own family. 
In both cases the motive is a good and honor- 
able one, but the result is disastrous to the 
country at large. We could speak of such 
a system of farming as destructive of land 
values for food production. So when we 
come to analyze most of the so-called de- 
structive forces in rural life we find they are 
misused constructive forces. 

35 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

It will be impossible for us in one brief 
chapter to adequately treat all these forces 
or agents that are the disturbing factors in 
our modern rural community life. Let us 
take a few of them, for example, and see how 
we may assist the people of our parishes to 
meet them successfully and build up a satis- 
fying community lif e. 

I. Isolation — Individualism — Lack or 
Acquaintanceship 

One of the greatest hindrances to progress 
in community building has been the lack of 
knowing our neighbors. The problem of 
race degeneration in many parts of New 
England and the Central and Southern At- 
lantic States has been due to the narrow 
ranges of human acquaintanceship. Close 
interbreeding by consanguineous marriages 
has led to physiological degeneracy and low 
types of morality. The churches should be- 
come as they were in former days — the con- 
structive agents of community-building. 
This can be done by giving opportunity for 
widening the range of human regard and 
building up the types by human acquaint- 
anceship. 

36 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

II. Lack of Cooperation 

There is present to-day competition with 
those who should be our cooperators. This 
has not been confined to material things — in 
the production, marketing, and buying of 
goods — but has been manifest in our church 
life to a degree that is almost tragic in some 
rural communities. I saw a photograph the 
other day in the magazine section of one of 
our great dailies of seven churches on one 
street in a little town in Tennessee where as 
many competing denominations held at sun- 
dry times divine worship, and the only sign 
of the cooperating spirit in the town was the 
fact that they all used the one stove, it being 
carried from one building to another in turn 
as the absentee pastors may have had occa- 
sion to preach in their respective pulpits. 

The surveys made in recent years have 
proven beyond question that church attend- 
ance as well as church membership is on the 
decline where there is the greatest denomina- 
tional competition, and is likewise on the 
increase where destructive rivalry has been 
supplanted by constructive cooperation. 
We have also discovered in recent years that 

37 



\ 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

home mission funds have been expended in 
larger measure in towns of competing de- 
nominations than in towns of no competi- 
tion. 

III. Waste of Potential Leadership 

One of the most destructive forces in 
modern rural community life is the lack of 
conservation of the boys of the farm homes 
for constructive community leadership. We 
see in many a rural community this discour- 
aging paradox — that while it has sent out to 
other fields of service strong young men as 
leaders, it lacks now the leadership for its 
own up-building. We fail somehow to 
direct the adolescent impulse to do into the 
channels of rural leadership. The rural 
church should not lose her opportunity to 
conserve this our greatest national resource 
— the boy life of the countryside. 

Many a farmer will allow his son to leave 
home for lack of pay for work done, and hire 
a man for wages who does less, has no inter- 
est in his employer's welfare, and in some 
cases becomes a moral menace to his family. 
A little encouragement to his own son and a 
proper share in the profits of their toil would 

38 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

have developed a leader for the community 
and a worthy successor to keep intact the old 
homestead and the family name in the com- 
munity. 

The same may be said of our rural min- 
istry : it is being recruited in many quarters 
to-day from the superannuates, and the 
novices from our prep schools and flunkers 
from the theological seminaries, when the 
age really demands the strongest type of 
leadership in the rural parish. There is no 
greater destructive force in our rural church 
life than that of incompetent pastoral lead- 
ership. 

IV. Unscientific Management of Farm 

Life 

Many of our richest farming districts have 
the lowest type of community life because 
the management of the farm life has not 
been such as to make it worth while for peo- 
ple to take an interest in the community. 
The soil has been depleted or the home has 
had no conveniences ; the stock has not been 
standardized; the breeds have run out and 
new strains have not been introduced. There 
has been no bookkeeping; debt has blos- 

39 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

somed and produced the farm mortgage, and 
in many other ways, for lack of management 
of a scientific character, the community has 
lost its attractiveness and ultimately, like 
some soils, it becomes depleted and unpro- 
ductive. 

V. Absentee Land Ownership and 
Tenantry 

It is a fact that the yield of land under 
tenantry is less per acre than under farm 
ownership. This is due to the strain put 
upon the land to support two families where 
it has been supporting one — and one of the 
two at a greater expense than formerly be- 
cause of the standards of living set by the 
city or village. This can be met, perhaps, by 
insisting upon a more just system of rentals ; 
or better, it may be, by making the life on the 
farm more attractive to the farmer's family, 
who are usually the real cause for his leaving 
it for town or city life. 

In the present world crisis where the prob- 
lem of feeding the peoples of the world is the 
most urgent of the war, it is our duty as rural 
leaders to master these destructive forces 
and give social directions to those productive 

40 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

forces that will make a better rural civiliza- 
tion possible and the safety of the world 
under the rule of the people assured. 

The factors in this problem are jive: land, 
labor , food production, conservation, and dis- 
tribution. The economic aspects of these 
factors that make a vigorous community lif e 
possible will be treated in the next chapter. 



41 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



CHAPTER IV 

ECONOMIC PROSPERITY, THE 
BASIS OF A VIGOROUS COM- 
MUNITY CHURCH LIFE 

I. The Primary or Fundamental 
Economic Factors 

1. Productive Soil. The first essential of 
a vigorous and prosperous community life 
in the open country is productive soil, speak- 
ing from the view point of agriculture. 
Other industries are equally dependent upon 
the products of the land, whether it be min- 
eral or timber land. The American people 
have been sinners against God and humanity 
in that they have been wasters of the land. 
The farmer, the woodsman, the mine oper- 
ator must be led to the conviction that the 
earth is holy — a gift of God in trust for the 
good of all the people — and it must be con- 
served and handed down to the next genera- 
tion as productive as when it was inherited, 
or even more productive. 

42 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

The technique of soil analysis and im- 
provement has been adequately worked out 
by the colleges of agriculture and experiment 
stations. The task of the present generation 
is to get that knowledge to the people on the 
land and make them see the economic value 
of acting upon it for the good of the com- 
munity and as a matter of self help as well. 
The land question is becoming a serious one 
for this country under the present stress of 
world need for food production. Let it be 
quoted again: "The earth is the Lord's, and 
the fullness thereof ; the world, and they that 
dwell therein." It is not the landlord's only 
in so far as he holds title to it, but it must be 
used by him economically for the good of all 
the people, else there will loom up before us 
the same problems that have shaken the very 
foundations of the Old- World governments 
in recent years. 

We cannot expect to see a vigorous and 
satisfying community life where the people 
on the countryside have no surplus from 
their labor upon the land. As Uncle Henry 
Wallace used to say, "People support the 
church and community projects not out of 
their capital, but out of their surplus of 

43 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

profits." It is therefore a part of our task as 
rural leaders to lead our people in the open 
country to get the best results from the land 
without depleting its productivity. 

2. Adequate Farm Labor. The second 
economic factor in our problem is that of 
labor. You cannot have economic prosper- 
ity without adequate labor power. This must 
be intelligent and self-respecting. We must 
in some way give more dignity to toil upon 
the farm. It must be organized upon the 
basis of a just wage, reasonable hours, and 
healthful housing. If in American rural 
communities we must have "the man with the 
hoe," we must see to it that it is a good hoe — 
not one that will bend the man to its shape 
but implements that will leave him erect and 
strong and capable of adjustment to other 
tasks. 

We must solve the problem of seasonable 
employment by developing rural industries 
so as to keep men in the community during 
the changing seasons so that they may be- 
come a part of the community life — or we 
must arrange for the transportation of 
trained farm labor in certain industries lati- 
tudinally as the seasons change so that the 

44 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

amount of labor will be available for whole 
regions as the seasons demand. This may 
be done by an industrial commission for 
inter-regional labor transportation as the 
Inter- State Commerce Commission does for 
the transportation of goods. The farm 
bureaus may be able to assist in such work 
until a plan of this kind could be worked out. 

3. Available Financial Resources. The 
next economic factor in building up a vigor- 
ous community life is available financial re- 
sources for carrying on the business of a 
rural community. The new Farm Loan and 
Banking System is a great step in the solu- 
tion of this economic problem of our rural 
civilization. But it is not sufficient. By ade- 
quate organizations and cooperative effort 
the farmers themselves must standardize the 
prices of their products and eliminate the un- 
just demands of the unscrupulous middle- 
man and the bargain-seeking consumer. 

The risks of transportation and storing of 
farm products have been practically elimi- 
nated by scientific invention and intelligent 
management of traffic. It is therefore no 
longer justifiable for the middleman to reap 
all the profits based upon a worn-out theory 

45 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

of risks that no longer exist, and the pro- 
ducer to receive so small a share of the profits 
of his toil in providing for the consumers' 
needs. 

Land, labor, and money may therefore be 
considered as the first group of economic 
factors for a vigorous community life. They 
are fundamental. 

II. Secondary Economic Factors 

Another group may be considered as 
secondary, and yet they are as vital to com- 
munity life as the first group. 

1. Production of Raw Materials. The pro- 
duction of food and raw materials is, of 
course, vital, the use and sale of which will 
bring an adequate income to the people of a 
community. This the science of agriculture 
and the knowledge of how to vary farm 
products to avoid the losses due to the old 
one-crop system, the securing of better 
seeds, better breeds, and better implements, 
as well as up-to-date methods of farming, 
will accomplish for the progressive com- 
munity. 

2. Conservation of Farm Products. The 
second factor is the conservation of farm 

46 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

products — preserving, canning, dehydrat- 
ing, and storing of foods. Take, for ex- 
ample, the canning club movement of the 
West and South, where in former years the 
people imported so much of their table sup- 
plies when they were working the one- or 
two-crop systems of farming. The work of 
Mrs. G. H. Mathis, of Gadsden, Alabama, 
will illustrate this point. She has carried the 
gospel of "Feed ourselves," "We must raise 
what we eat," all through the Southland, and 
as a result whole communities have become 
economically independent where they were 
formerly slaves to King Cotton. 

3. Distribution or Marketing of Farm 
Products. Here is the need of an intelligent 
study of the market as to the time when farm 
products will be needed, and a study of the 
seasons of planting so as to be ready for the 
market, also a system of grading and pack- 
ing so as to put the goods on the market in 
attractive form and in usable condition for 
the consumer. Maryland truckers and fruit 
growers have learned that lesson in competi- 
tion with Western and Southern growers, 
who first made inroads on the markets of the 
East by their superior methods of grading 

47 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

and packing — certainly not in quality and 
flavor of fruits. 

III. Psychological Factors 

1. The Mental Attitudes of People. Still 
another set of economic factors that are im- 
portant in the building of a prosperous com- 
munity is what may be called the psycholog- 
ical, or spiritual factors — those that have to 
do with the mental attitudes people of a com- 
munity take toward innovation and change 
of methods. The mastery of these social 
forces requires the skill of the social engineer 
— the man who can get team work done by 
people who have not been accustomed to 
work with their neighbors, the man who has 
mastered the art of getting human groups of 
varying opinions to work together without 
friction in harmony with a given plan; in 
other words, the organization of team work 
for the community. Out in a little town in 
Indiana some time ago, as I was passing 
through on the train, I counted on the siding 
ten freight cars behind one engine and each 
car had the label of a different railroad sys- 
tem of the United States and Canada. 
Here on one track was team work of ten 

48 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

railroad systems serving the needs of one 
community in the State of Indiana. 

The churches can learn a lesson from this : 
some are narrow-gauged, some are broad- 
gauged, some employ fire, some water, and it 
is almost impossible in some communities to 
have a vigorous church life because religious 
team work is impossible under these condi- 
tions. 

2. Team Work. The same is true of polit- 
ical groups and industrial groups — the 
psychic factors are so difficult to coordinate 
that no team work is possible. So we have 
industrial unrest and warfare, incompetent 
city governments, and sometimes graft. 
Here we need the social engineer to organize 
business management for the city and scien- 
tific management for industry. 

So then we find that economic prosperity 
is the basis of a vigorous community life, be- 
cause (1) it keeps the people together long 
enough to plan things together and to work 
the law of imitation and adaptation; (2) it 
makes better equipment for conducting com- 
munity projects possible; (3) it makes pos- 
sible resident pastoral leadership for the re- 
ligious life of the community; (4) it makes 

49 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

it possible to build and maintain a well- 
equipped school; (5) it makes possible bet- 
ter homes, because they can afford better 
labor-saving devices, and thus make life 
more satisfying. 

In our next chapter we will show how the 
church can help to develop such community 
life by serving the whole community. 



50 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 



CHAPTER V 

THE RURAL CHURCH SERVING 
A COMMUNITY 

The subject of this chapter refers to the 
church in the rural community, or it may 
imply the task of the country church in cre- 
ating a community where there is none, or 
the task of giving Christian leadership to a 
community already socially conscious, but in 
danger, as in some cases, of becoming pagan 
unless the church fulfills its function. 

Why are we focusing our attention to-day 
upon the rural life of the nation? Because it 
includes not only over one half (fifty-three 
per cent) of the population of this country, 
but it also represents the great resource field 
of the nation's wealth. It is here also we dis- 
cover such splendid heroic individuality as 
has produced the largest percentage of 
moral, religious, industrial, and political 
leadership of all the ages; and yet at the 
same time we discover national waste of re- 
sources — natural, human, and spiritual — be- 

51 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

cause here we find the least of community in- 
terest and cooperation. 

Why are we discussing so often in these 
days the problems of the country church? 
Because in many sections of our country it 
presents to us one of the most difficult mis- 
sion fields of the world to cultivate, for the 
reason that, like the slums of the great cities, 
it is a lost home field. As one goes back to 
his home county in the rural sections of the 
Eastern, Southern, and some of the Middle 
Western States, what does he discover? The 
splendid old circuit system broken up and 
the fires of religious fervor gone out upon 
many an abandoned church and family altar, 
while the message of the minister in the neg- 
lected pulpit of the dilapidated church 
building is about as effective in creating a 
community spirit as the noise of a lone wood- 
pecker on a dead tree in a swamp. Why is 
this so? Because there has taken place a 
population change through population move- 
ment, while there has been little, if any, 
change in the methods of church work to 
meet the changing needs of these localities. 

The country church of the pioneer period 
selected methods and men to meet the needs 

52 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

of that time. The country church of to-day 
will succeed when it adopts this policy. 
Then the preacher was a moving tie ; to-day 
he must be the central cell of a new social 
nucleus. The circuit system in most rural 
communities has ceased to be as effective as 
it was then. The "meeting house" (may we 
preserve the idea if not the name!) is still 
essential ; but it must be more than a meeting 
place — it must become the center for the or- 
ganized expression of the whole community 
life. The circuit rider was an heroic and 
necessary social agent then; he is so no 
longer. To-day we need a new heroic type 
of country preacher who has the courage to 
stay camped in one community until by reli- 
gious instruction and social service he has, 
like John Frederick Oberlin, built up in one 
whole sweep of country a new rural civiliza- 
tion in which the character of Christ is the 
badge of good citizenship. 

The country preacher of to-day confront- 
ing his task, hard as it may seem, must have 
the vision of his church as a community 
center and the sense of personal responsibil- 
ity as to his work as the prophet Isaiah had 
in reference to the religious center of a rural 

53 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

folk living in a territory no larger than the 
State of New Jersey. Isaiah said, "For 
Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for 
Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the 
righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, 
and the salvation thereof as a lamp that 
burnetii" (Isa. 62. 1 ) . Here we get the con- 
ception that the church should be an attrac- 
tive force and a saving agency in the com- 
munity in which the man of God can invest 
his whole life. 

We wish to present as briefly as possible 
the subjects, (1) "The Church Serving the 
Community," and (2) "The Social-Center 
Parish Plan." 

I. The Church Serving the Community 

Keep in mind the declaration of the 
prophet given above. 

1. The church, in the first place, should 
stand as an attractive force in the commu- 
nity. ("Until the righteous thereof go forth 
as brightness.") Its building and equip- 
ment, its organization, its policy, the things 
for which it stands, its ideals for membership 
and work should all be arranged with the 
view of attracting the people of the commu- 

54 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

nity; "Until her righteousness go forth as 
brightness." 

The greatest peril the church of the pres- 
ent has to face in the community is not the 
hostility of the people but their indifference : 
the peril of unattractiveness to those who 
need her fellowship — the peril of being let 
alone by the multitudes. The building 
should be so constructed as to attract the 
people. The work should be so organized as 
to render service to the entire community. 
(There is a diversity of gifts, but the same 
spirit.) If there should exist any form of 
unrighteousness in the community, the 
church should be so organized as to create a 
public opinion that will hit it hard, remove 
the evil and establish righteousness. Her 
policy should not be that of a class-conscious 
group, but, rather, that of the community 
spirit which stands for social justice. 

The community church must have an ideal 
that should be more attractive at least than 
the platform of any political party, or social 
organization, or socialistic program. 

2. In the second place, the church should 
be a saving agency, an active power in the 
community ("And the salvation thereof as 

55 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

a lamp that burnetii"). This, of course, 
involves what the church proposes to do in 
the community. 

The first task should be the endeavor to 
reconcile the erring souls to God through 
the person and work of Jesus Christ as 
Saviour and Lord; but more and more in our 
time should the church perform her teaching 
function by acquainting the children at the 
earliest possible moment with Jesus Christ 
their Saviour. This can be done by the well- 
organized Sunday school, and by special em- 
phasis upon parental obligation in the home. 
Later, when we get over the selfishness of 
sectarianism we shall be able to adequately 
organize for religious instruction in connec- 
tion with the public school system. 

The church should become a saving agency 
also by organizing the recreational and play 
life of the people. It should stand for 
wholesome and clean amusement hallsr and 
the organized playground for school and 
community at large. 

3. The church should seek to give a reli- 
gious significance to all the legitimate forms 
of social service in the community by furnish- 
ing intelligent Christian leadership. For ex- 

56 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

ample, in the work of the Department of 
Public Health, the enforcement of welfare 
legislation, the prosecution of the procurer 
in vice, and in the support of all good means 
for the betterment of the life of the wage- 
earner, and the men and women in public 
employment. In fact, the time has come 
when the church can no longer maintain its 
self-respect unless it burns as a lamp of 
righteousness in making quick the public 
conscience with regard to human rights and 
social justice. 

If we are ever to have the rule of Christ in 
human society — which means the kingdom of 
God on earth — we must have every man and 
woman doing the necessary and legitimate 
work of the world with the consciousness that 
it is a part of the work of the Kingdom. 
This was Paul's ideal when he said, "What- 
ever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name 
of the Lord Jesus." 

The church members who have helped to 
formulate the program of the church for 
the community must stand together for ac- 
tion that will count in making the work of 
the church real in the community. 

In the well-organized community church 
57 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



it is no longer possible for the membership 
to stand idle in the marketplace of Christian 
work and say, "No man hath hired us," for 
there is some form of activity in the church's 
program in which every member can take an 
active part — and, besides, we are still left 
that broad range of individual initiative to 
keep ourselves active in doing the work of the 
Kingdom, so that we will be without excuse. 
The time has gone by when enlightened 
people are going to be satisfied merely with 
church buildings and programs. When 
Jesus announced his great social program 
from a pulpit in Capernaum the people said, 
"What gracious words proceed from his 
mouth." But Jesus said, "To-day is this 
scripture fulfilled in your ears." We are not 
to stop there. We must so speak and act — 
the church of the community must so organ- 
ize its forces and work — that the people will 
be compelled to say, "To-day is His program 
being carried out in our community." 

II. The Social-Center Parish Plan 1 

It should be acknowledged at the outset 
that the old circuit system was of great serv- 

1 See The Rural Church Movement, chapter vii. 
58 




■UNITY 

even later, in 
r th$' country church in 
fd^liso be granted that- ti£ 
stil/a practicable method in 
pal domain, even to-day, 
riewer and more sparsely 
But, on the other hand, it 
fe frankly admitted by everyone who 
is the facts that the changed conditions 
m our rural life demand a change in our 
methods of ministering to the people. 

The emphasis of church work is no longer 
merely upon the saving of the individuals 
but also upon the saving of the community, 
and in a large sense the saving of our rural 
civilization from becoming pagan. Further- 
more, some of our leading thinkers and writ- 
ers on the rural situation declare that it will 
soon be a question of whether the churches 
in the rural districts will be able to save 
themselves if the present condition and 
methods of church life continue. Professor 
Carver says: "Unless the church makes itself 
a positive factor in the building up of the 
rural community and rural civilization, it 
will have to get out. And, in the main, the 
church must rebuild the rural community 

59 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

through its own members by making them 
better farmers, better citizens, of more value 
to the community." 

To save individuals, to save the com- 
munity, and to save itself the country church 
must adopt an adequate plan to meet the de- 
mands of modern rural community needs. 
In my judgment, that plan best suited to 
function in this field is what I call the social- 
center parish plan, or the circular system, as 
a substitute for the old circuit system. We 
will discuss this subject from the point of 
view of (1) "The Plan," (2) "Its Value as a 
Socializing Agency," and (3) "How the 
Plan Can Be Worked." 

1. The Plan. The plan involves three es- 
sential things after a thorough social survey 
has been made. The survey is so necessary 
and fundamental that it might be reckoned 
with the other three as the first of the four — 
a chart, or map of the entire parish or com- 
munity, a program of work covering the de- 
tails of the chart, and a staff of workers with 
voluntary or paid assistants. 

( 1 ) The Social Survey should include all 
the facts of the community: (a) those that 
may be termed assets, or life-giving and 

60 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

community serving resources ; (b) those that 
may be termed liabilities, those that are life- 
destroying or community-destroying factors. 
It should be geological, biological, demo- 
graphical, and sociological, as well as a reli- 
gious survey of the entire community. 

(2) The Chart or Map should be carefully 
made upon such a scale that every member of 
the parish can understand it. It should be 
put in usable form for distribution, but espe- 
cially should it be placed in the pastor's 
study, or in the assembly hall, where the facts 
of the community as well as the individual 
interest and responsibility could be pointed 
out. It should not only mark out the pres- 
ent location of farmhouses, schools, stores, 
shops, churches, roads, the best soils adapted 
to certain crops, etc., but it should include 
also what ought to be the location of these 
buildings and where roads ought to be 
changed, or reconstructed, or graded, new 
bridges built, and where all public improve- 
ments should be made. All these should be 
so carefully and graphically presented by 
charts, photographs, and lettering that it 
would be a means of public education in 
what the community ought to be. Striking 

61 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

contrasts of what is and what ought to be in 
rural life can be very easily and cheaply pre- 
sented by paper and ink, or by photographs 
and posters, and these are often more con- 
vincing and saving than some sermons I have 
heard in rural churches. 

(3) A Program of Work. To illustrate: 
I have in mind our summer camp all charted 
and mapped out, and a program of work for 
the next year, and several years perhaps. I 
know all the dead trees that need to be cut 
next summer, the stumps and stones I want 
to remove from the soil, the paths I am going 
to make in the woods, the kind of treatment 
the soil of the garden requires, the kind of 
boathouse I want to build, the color and 
quality of the paint to be put on the build- 
ings, and many other details. So the rural 
leader of the social-center parish should have 
outlined a program of work so that he will 
not only see things done in the community 
but will actually get the young life at work, 
in order that it may function in the essentials 
of rural leadership and community service. 
How are you going to keep boys in the 
church and train them for real service in the 
Kingdom? That should be planned out be- 

62 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

fore there is a tendency for the group to 
lapse from the Sunday school, and leave the 
farm for the prodigal experience. 

How are you going to keep that rich old 
lady, a little eccentric perhaps, from leaving 
her property to the endowment of a dog 
kennel or a feline sanatarium, and persuade 
her, instead, to endow some scholarships for 
the country boys in some form of research 
that will help the community, or to give it 
for the employment of a young man or 
young woman to supervise the play life of 
the community, so that the children will not 
fight like cats and dogs at their play? In 
every detail of community betterment this 
plan makes possible a program and a per- 
formance. 

(4) A Staff of Workers. This is abso- 
lutely necessary; and where volunteers can- 
not be had it will require a paid staff, such as 
the County Work Department is putting 
into some of the communities through its 
statesmanlike program for rural community 
betterment. 

The graduates of the agricultural college 
and rural high school can be enlisted for this 
kind of work. Instead of trying to get every 

63 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

young man to express his religious experi- 
ence in the same way, as in my boyhood days, 
we will come up to the position of Paul in 
recognizing that in the work of the Kingdom 
there are varieties of gifts, but the same 
spirit. 

Give these young men and women the lit- 
erature needed to give them the vision and 
practical knowledge. If not already gradu- 
ates, try to get for them a scholarship in a 
college, a short course, or the expenses for a 
summer school in rural leadership. 

2. Its Value as a Socializing Agency. 
Such an institution as the rural church or- 
ganized on the social-center parish plan, has 
two essential social aims as its function in the 
community : ( 1 ) To socialize the community 
in consciousness; (2) to socialize the com- 
munity in its activity. 

(1) Socializing a Community in Con- 
sciousness. A community is socialized in 
consciousness when it comes to acknowledge 
the necessary facts in social evolution of the 
need for social cleavage in community build- 
ing, and at the same time develops that social 
sympathy that keeps these class-conscious 
groups in sympathetic cooperation with each 

64 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

other in carrying on the work necessary to 
the fullest life of the community. In other 
words, the church should so broaden the peo- 
ple's definition of the kingdom of God on 
earth that every man and woman who is do- 
ing a necessary part of the world's work 
which has to do with the health and happi- 
ness of the community as a whole may be 
conscious of doing the work of the Kingdom, 
and should, therefore, receive a just share of 
the rewards society offers of social esteem 
and of economic values, wages, or goods pro- 
duced by labor of whatever sort. With such 
a chart and program as I have described 
above it would not be difficult to develop 
such a social consciousness in the minds of 
all the people of the parish. 

(2) Socializing a Community in Activity. 
When is a community socialized in activity? 
When, awakened to the consciousness of its 
needs, it has developed adequate organiza- 
tion of its population, invented efficient so- 
cial machinery, and trained effective social 
engineers to make use of its available re- 
sources for all the people within the com- 
munity so that they will be in possession of 
that equality of opportunity which means, 

65 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

not the chance to secure the control of re- 
sources and exploit them for personal or for 
corporate ends, but the equality of oppor- 
tunity to secure for each a just share of the 
products of industry through distribution 
according to the measure of services ren- 
dered. In other words, a community is 
socialized when it has developed a social 
medium through which there is a reciprocal 
correspondence between human needs and 
available resources. 

To me this is, in brief, the function of the 
country church as a socializing agent in the 
building up of the community life that will 
correspond to the New Testament concep- 
tion of the kingdom of God upon earth. 

3. How the Plan Can Be Worked. No 
plan, however scientific and workable, will 
work itself. It has to be worked, and by a 
man who has the essential elements of social 
leadership in his make-up. 

( 1 ) The Leader. Such a plan must have 
a leader who loves work, who can sense the 
needs of the community, who has a construc- 
tive imagination, and who has will power, or 
a persistent purpose to succeed when he 
knows he is right. 

66 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

(2) Financial Support. It requires an 
adequate financial plan of support. A fool 
project may succeed if properly financed, 
while a reasonable plan may fail if not prop- 
erly financed. In most communities the peo- 
ple will pay for what they get if they are con- 
vinced the goods are worth the money. 
Sometimes it is necessary to introduce the 
goods by gift, or cut the price to one half the 
value. So in some rural communities it will 
be necessary at first to get financial support 
for the central-parish plan from private gifts 
or from denominational funds outside the 
community to be served. The County Work 
Department has demonstrated the feasibility 
of this plan. 

(3) Policy of Administration. Such a 
plan on a large scale involves a more states- 
manlike policy of administration of home 
missions and church extension funds by some 
of the Protestant denominations than has 
been evident hitherto. Instead of doling out 
dribs to defunct churches in overchurched 
communities, or for petty plans for new en- 
terprises of little importance, if these boards 
would set aside a fund for establishing a few 
central parishes in communities that would 

67 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

act as imitation centers for other commu- 
nities, it seems to me we would make greater 
progress in home missions and church exten- 
sion than we are now making under our pres- 
ent policy, which we have inherited from the 
pioneer past. 1 

(4) Cooperation, Cooperation by over- 
head organizations of Home Mission Boards 
for the Country Church as a definite policy 
for rural communities, (a) By dividing the 
rural field into "spheres of influence" as has 
been done in the Foreign Field, and recently 
in Mexico by the Foreign Mission Boards. 
This would apply especially to the rural 
fields not yet churched, (b) Common con- 
sent to unite where the people can be per- 
suaded to follow the lead, leaving the respon- 
sibility of administration to the denomination 
agreed upon by the people, (c) The "give 
and take" principle as between the denom- 
inations on reciprocal terms, for different 
communities, where, in the one, denomina- 
tion "A" is stronger than denomination "B," 



1 The Department of Rural Work of the Board of Home 
Missions and Church Extension of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church has established a number of these social center par- 
ishes as demonstration centers. 

68 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

and in the other where denomination "B" 
is stronger than denomination "A." Here 
we have an exchange which leaves both de- 
nominations equally strong as a whole, and 
locally stronger because of the elimination 
of competition and waste. This applies to 
old fields where there is competition or stag- 
nation, (d) Where this cannot be secured 
the overhead organizations should agree to 
adopt the law of adaptation to environment, 
or the law of the survival of the fittest, and 
help the church that is willing to organize 
its work on a community basis, that is, with 
the aim to serve the whole community with- 
out reference to denomination, and then let 
the others die, or hustle to do likewise. 



69 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



CHAPTER VI 

THE OVERHEAD ORGANIZA- 
TION OF THE COUNTRY 
CHURCH 

In a letter requesting me to speak before 
a conference of rural leaders on this subject 
some time ago I noticed this significant 
sentence: "I feel that some one ought to 
state at this conference the great importance 
of the leading agencies in the denominations 
arranging themselves so as to serve the needs 
of the country churches." This sentence im- 
plies more than it states. It implies that the 
overhead management of our Home Mission 
Boards have not in the past been arranging 
themselves to serve the needs of the country 
churches. It implies that too little emphasis 
has been placed by these boards upon this 
neglected and yet most important field of 
home mission enterprise. 

It did not imply, as it might well have 
done, that change in the form of these over- 
head organizations should be made, but did 

70 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

imply that a change in policy should be in- 
augurated so that they may serve the needs 
of the country churches, separately or co- 
operatively, in a more efficient way, and 
thus secure more permanent results. The 
fact that in that conference there were 
brought together the secretaries of the vari- 
ous Home Mission Boards of the leading 
Protestant denominations in this country is 
a proof that we have come a long way on the 
road to church federation and cooperation, 
and that we are more willing to see the king- 
dom of Jesus Christ established in the rural 
communities than to have any one of our 
denominations secure advantages in these 
fields. 

This state of affairs in Home Mission 
Boards was due to the fact that we had put 
upon men the responsibility of administer- 
ing affairs of the whole field of home mis- 
sions, and of disbursing millions of money 
without providing them with machinery and 
giving them the authority to find out for 
themselves and the church at large what 
were the real needs of the communities, espe- 
cially rural, that they were to serve. 

The rural social survey as a method of 
71 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

finding out the needs of the country com- 
munity is so well known that we no longer 
can afford to plead ignorance of needs in 
rural churches. The Rural Life movement 
in this country is so rapidly becoming or- 
ganized that the Christian Church, repre- 
sented by these great Home Mission Boards, 
needs to make haste to keep pace in organiz- 
ing its work in rural church communities so 
that it may dominate this new rural civiliza- 
tion with Christian leadership, and also lest 
this new rural civilization be pagan rather 
than Christian, as has been too often the case 
with industrial and political civilization, 

I wish to speak of three matters of general 
importance to overhead organizations in the 
country church work : ( 1 ) The need of inter- 
vention because of the character of the rural 
field. (2) The need of a definite program 
of Home Missions and Church Extension in 
rural fields. (3) The need of cooperation by 
the denominational overhead organizations 
as a definite policy in rural communities. 

I. Cooperative Overhead Intervention 

The character of the rural field calls for 
cooperative overhead intervention. 

72 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

1. As a result of surveys conducted with 
more or less scientific precision, we discover 
that in rural communities church attendance 
is on the decline where there is the largest 
number of denominations in competition as 
compared with one-church communities of 
the same size. Also we have found that a 
larger proportion of home mission funds has 
been expended by the denominations in 
towns of five competing churches than in 
towns or villages where there was no com- 
petition, and that there are many commu- 
nities, as in New England, New Jersey, and 
Colorado, where there is no church, and, of 
course, no appropriation. 

2. The open country contains over one half 
of the population of this country, and from 
this part of the national domain has come in 
the past the greater percentage of the leader- 
ship in the larger fields of human activity. 
Here is the potential leadership of the future 
and it must be conserved by the activities of 
the church. In the rural field to-day there is 
a serious lack of leadership for the very tasks 
the church must face in this field, as well as 
other phases of the Rural Life movement. 
Here also we discover the need for funds to 

73 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

adequately finance the projects we know will 
succeed if adequately led and supported. 

3. The Federal "Bureau of Rural Organ- 
ization" is seeking to coordinate all the rural 
social forces so as to more efficiently serve 
the nation that must depend for its very sus- 
tenance upon the products of human labor 
in the rural domain. The college of agricul- 
ture, the consolidated school, the State Farm 
Bureau, the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, the Domestic Science Association 
through their field secretaries and demon- 
strators, also the Young Women's Christian 
Association in the rural communities, are all 
contributing to the building of a new rural 
civilization. All these facts represent the 
pressing need of the reorganization of the 
country church from the viewpoint of the 
overhead organizations in order that it may 
take its place, which, as in the pioneer days, 
should be the leading place in this modern 
movement before the forms are set and while 
it can be molded to the form of the kingdom 
of God upon earth. 

4. Because of population movement in the 
open country, the change from owner to 
tenant, and the heterogeneousness of farm 

74 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

labor and that of rural industries, it is no 
longer possible to support mere denomina- 
tional institutions in the open country or in 
the rural towns without some kind of agree- 
ment by the overhead organizations, w-ho 
must furnish the leadership and the funds 
and put up the buildings. 

5. There is also a lack of vision in the local 
situation. Some one must be sent who can 
make them visualize the larger parish and its 
work in the service of the world kingdom. 
This can come only from those who have the 
essentials of leadership, and who by a con- 
structive vision can show the smaller com- 
munity how it can serve the multitudes in the 
larger fields of the church. 

II. A Definite Program for the 
Rural Community 

1. The first requisite of administration 
boards in home missions having to do with 
rural fields is a comprehensive and scientific 
study of the entire rural domain with refer- 
ence to the actual needs, the available re- 
sources, and the strategic centers, where per- 
manent church enterprises may be estab- 
lished. 

75 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

This could be done cooperatively by the 
leading denominational boards, without 
overlapping, in a comparatively brief period, 
and at not too great expense, if the entire 
rural domain were divided into regions and 
surveyed by men and women of ability ac- 
cording to a definite plan. For example : 

(1) Let one interdenominational group 
conduct the survey work. 

(2) Have another specialize on the organ- 
ization of rural communities on the Social- 
Center Parish Plan. 

(3) Arrange for another to specialize in 
setting up the every -member canvass and the 
organization of rural budgets on the basis of 
sound finance. 

(4) Still another group could specialize 
on rural architecture and recreation plans 
and playgrounds. 

2. The Social- Center Parish Plan should 
be adopted as the ideal toward which all the 
denominations should work. Let a circular 
system take the place of the old circuit sys- 
tem with a central plant and staff of workers 
organized on the basis of service for the en- 
tire community or country-side. 

3. Home Mission Boards should now 

76 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

adopt the plan of the Foreign Boards in the 
selection and training of volunteers for the 
field. We must make the open country as 
impelling as the foreign field from the view- 
point of life investment if we hope to get the 
best type of leadership to enlist for the coun- 
try church field. We must insist also upon 
definite courses of training for those men in 
our schools, and organize Bible study classes 
in colleges on the rural field as well as 
courses on the forms of mission work. A 
good plan would be the establishment of Fel- 
lowships for "key men" in our theological 
seminaries who could, on graduation, spend 
a year or two on the specific study of some 
rural church field with the view to giving 
their lives to this kind of work; also some 
scholarships to country ministers to attend a 
summer school on methods in rural leader- 
ship and the country church, so that on his 
return each could become a community 
leader for the entire parish or rural region. 

4. There should be adopted a definite plan 
of administration of home mission funds by 
the overhead organizations. The collection 
of funds should remain connectional, as at 
present, for the whole denomination, but 

77 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

under the central parish plan encouragement 
should be given to the formation of a parish 
budget which would localize responsibility 
for program and expenditure, and lead ulti- 
mately to self-support. This budget could 
be supplemented by the general .board as a 
guarantee for the carrying out of the plan. 
Such a system works well for the County 
Young Men's Christian Association. The 
summer school attendance by the leader 
should be included in the general budget. 

Administrative responsibility in expend- 
iture should be centralized in the overhead 
organization to avoid what in some cases 
amounts to a pious pork-barrel policy in the 
division of funds in a lump sum to confer- 
ences to be divided up by districts and then 
handed out in ridiculously small amounts to 
support inefficient men or to keep an inade- 
quate building in repair, or to prolong de- 
nominational rivalry in over-churched com- 
munities, as well as to avoid also that eccle- 
siastical administrative twilight zone where 
responsibility for failure to secure results is 
lost in the verbiage of annual reports. 

The overhead organizations, with ample 
funds at their disposal and with such definite 

78 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

responsibility for results, could then under- 
take definite scientific work in specific rural 
fields where success would give to the church 
at large an imitation center which could be 
given a multiplier in many like situations. 

III. A Definite Policy for Rural 
Communities 

Cooperation by overhead organizations in 
the country church is desirable as a definite 
policy for rural communities. 

1. These organizations could divide the 
rural domain into "spheres of influence," as 
has been done in the foreign field, and re- 
cently in Mexico, by the foreign boards. 
This would apply specifically to the rural 
fields not yet churched. 

2. In the old fields where there is competi- 
tion or stagnation, the following ideas should 
be adopted in a cooperative policy: 

(1) Common consent to unite where the 
people can be persuaded to follow the lead, 
leaving the responsibility of administration 
to the denomination agreed upon by the 
people. 

(2) The "give-and-take" principle as be- 
tween two denominations on reciprocal terms 

79 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

for different communities where in the one 
denomination "A" is stronger than "B," and 
in the other where denomination "B" is 
stronger than "A." Here we have an ex- 
change which leaves both denominations 
equally strong as a whole, and locally 
stronger because of the elimination of com- 
petition and waste. 

(3) Where this cannot be secured, the 
overhead organizations can agree to adopt 
the law of adaptation to environment, or the 
survival of the fittest, and help the church 
which is willing to organize its work on a 
community basis; that is, with the aim to 
serve the entire community without refer- 
ence to denomination, and then let the others 
die, or hustle to do likewise. 

(4) Before giving any funds to a country 
church in any community, the overhead sec- 
retaries should insist that a local community 
survey first be made; that its needs should 
be charted and a program of work outlined, 
a staff of workers organized (volunteers or 
paid), and a leader capable of serving the 
community be secured before any home mis- 
sion funds be appropriated, unless it be a 
case of charity, in which case the appropria- 

80 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

tion should come from a separate fund for 
that purpose. 

If the overhead organizations in rural 
church work will "arrange themselves" upon 
the basis of these proposals, I believe it will 
not be long before this vast resource field for 
the nation's needs will be reclaimed entirely 
as a lost home field of the church, and will 
again be furnishing, as in the past, the larg- 
est percentage of the economic, the political, 
the moral, the educational, and religious 
leadership of our new civilization, which we 
trust will be the realization of our hopes — 
the Kingdom of God "come" 



81 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TRAINING OF RURAL 
MINISTERS 

It must be understood at the outset in dis- 
cussing a subject of this character that the 
writer assumes a general agreement upon the 
fundamentals of preparation for the Chris- 
tian ministry for any field, and for all fields. 

We cannot, however, too strongly empha- 
size the need for a deeply spiritually minded 
ministry. One of the most marked char- 
acteristics of all the rural life conferences 
which it has been my privilege to attend has 
been the throb of a deep spiritual undertone, 
which is the very dynamic of the whole Rural 
Life movement. The great backgrounds of 
the open country in some way contribute to 
deep spiritual insight. All the great reli- 
gious leaders of all the ages have been men 
who got their message from the Almighty in 
the quiet and majesty of the mountains, the 
deserts, the plains, and the fields. 

If a man is to succeed as a real leader in 
the open country, he must impress the people 

82 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

at the outset of his ministry that he is a 
"teacher come from God." Such was the im- 
pression made by Jesus of Nazareth as he 
began his ministry in the open country of 
Galilee and Judaea, among the rural folk 
inhabiting a territory not larger than the 
State of New Jersey. 

Assuming this to be fundamental and the 
point of agreement at the outset, we there- 
fore wish to emphasize some additional 
factors in the preparation for the rural min- 
istry that are most essential to efficiency in 
our times when the farmers are being trained 
as never before in the technical learning for 
efficiency in every branch of agricultural 
science. 

I. Rural Ministers Classified 

1. In the first place, we must devise some 
way of training for more efficient service the 
men who are already in the rural churches 
and will likely remain there for some time, 
who have had little or no training for the 
rural field, and who never will be able (un- 
aided) to attend a theological seminary, or 
Bible school, or even a conference on the 
country church and rural life at any great 

83 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

distance from their charges, because of the 
meager salaries they receive, and the cares 
that keep them at home. 

2. In the second place, we must keep in 
mind the large number of young men who 
are now in the colleges and universities 
studying with the intention of entering the 
Christian ministry, and many of whom must 
begin their ministry in the rural churches. 
Some way must be provided for educating 
them for the rural pastorate while in col- 
lege, because only about fifteen per cent of 
them in some denominations go to the theo- 
logical seminaries after they graduate from 
the college or university. 

3. In the third place, we must keep in mind 
the large body of men who do go to the theo- 
logical seminaries, and are now studying for 
the Christian ministry, many of whom when 
they graduate must begin their ministerial 
careers in the country pastorates. 

II. Methods or Training the Rural 
Ministry 

Our problem is to train these three classes 
of men for the pastorate in the open country 
and rural towns. 

84 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

The essential elements of training for the 
rural pastorate are the same for all three 
classes, but our methods of training must 
necessarily differ in dealing with each group. 

1. The most practicable method of dealing 
with the first group is to meet them in 
smaller groups, taking the county, presby- 
tery, classis, or Conference district as a unit, 
and furnishing a program and speakers with 
vital energy for the task, calling in men who 
represent every essential element of need in 
the constructive work of the rural com- 
munity, men who can make the rural pastor 
visualize his community task, see its needs, 
and construct a workable community church 
plan. Rural sociology, rural economics, 
rural homiletics should be properly capsuled 
and administered in homeopathic doses, lest 
they develop an emetic effect that will spoil 
your entire program. Make theological ex- 
tension work correspond to agricultural ex- 
tension. Conduct a theological short course, 
or summer school. 

2. In educating those of the second group 
it will be necessary to introduce into the cur- 
riculum of the college courses on "Rural So- 
ciology and the Country Church"; also 

85 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

courses in "Rural Economics and Their Re- 
lation to the Rural Pastorate." Courses in 
rural Bible study should be offered by the 
college Young Men's Christian Association 
— for example: "The Rural Consciousness 
of the Prophets," "The Rural-Mindedness 
of Jesus." Mission study courses should 
also be arranged around such topics as the 
following: "The Conquest of the Germanic 
Races a Rural Achievement," "The Lu- 
theran Reformation in Relation to Rural 
Life," "The Pioneer Period of Protestant- 
ism in America." 

Also volunteer bands for life investment 
in the open country could be organized and 
young men and women urged to volunteer 
for such service as they are now urged to 
do for the foreign fields and for the city 
slums. 

Such methods should be especially stressed 
in the colleges of agriculture, where there are 
young men preparing themselves with spe- 
cial reference to the open country. 

3. For those of the third group the above 
recommendations for group two would also 
apply. Courses in "The Country Church as 
a Community Center," "Rural Sociology," 

86 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

including an introductory course in "The 
Principles of Sociology as Applied to the 
Country" ; also a course in "Rural Social Or- 
ganization/' and still another course in 
"Rural Social Engineering." Such a scheme 
of courses is already being worked out at 
some of the leading theological seminaries, 
and is being given in part in their summer 
schools of theology and of Christian work. 

The Home Mission Boards and other 
agencies should be induced to establish a 
number of scholarships covering the ex- 
penses of worthy young men who may wish 
to attend these summer schools, or "short 
courses" as they may be offered at confer- 
ences on country lif e in connection with other 
than theological institutions. 

III. Graduate Fellowships in Rueal 
Church Fields 

1. A number of Fellowships should be es- 
tablished in our theological seminaries by 
wealthy retired farmers and business men 
interested in the welfare of the country 
churches, so that a number of young men 
graduating from these schools could spend 
a year in studying the rural church problems 

87 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

at close range, who could attend churches in 
typical rural communities and study the 
causes of failure or the factors that contrib- 
ute to success in the modern country church. 

2. Such students could also study the re- 
lation of the rural church to the whole prob- 
lem of agriculture and bring back to the 
seminary the facts that would enrich the 
courses of the department dealing with this 
important church field. 

3. These Fellowship men could be used in 
theological extension work among the coun- 
try ministers who cannot attend the courses 
given in the seminary or go to a summer 
school or to a conference at any great dis- 
tance from their local community. 

4. They should be used also to take charge 
of rural church demonstration centers, where 
under wise and efficient leadership a Social- 
Center Parish plan could be established and 
made self-supporting within a given period. 

5. Such men would be recruiting agents 
for the ministry in sending choice men to col- 
lege and seminary for adequate training for 
the modern ministry. 

6. These men could also be used to carry 
the message of our new rural civilization to 

88 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

the city churches, and help to establish a 
better feeling of sympathy and cooperation 
between the producers and consumers of 
agricultural products. 

7. There will be need also of such men in 
working out a practical solution of the prob- 
lem of reaching and serving the immigrant 
population groups in our rural domain, and 
in mastering the problem of the survival of 
the country church in communities where 
tenantry is displacing the stable population 
of landowners who support the churches. 

The old-time theologically trained min- 
ister was unfitted by his training to meet the 
needs of country life. He deteriorated be- 
cause he was unable to make use of the edu- 
cational resources of the open country. He 
had been accustomed to draw his illustra- 
tions from literature and the church Fathers. 
He had no mind to grasp, as did Jesus, the 
significance of the plant and animal life that 
crowded his pathway in the rural parish. 

Professor W. K. Tate, of Nashville, Ten- 
nessee, says the training of the country min- 
ister should include the following: " (1) The 
sciences underlying farm life, especially the 
biological sciences; (2) enough agriculture 

89 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

to allow the free use of this subject as a 
source of illustration ; (3) constructive rural 
sociology; (4) rural recreation ; (5) a study 
of the changing ideals of rural education; 
(6) rural economics, especially as it relates 
to community organization. [And I would 
add as it relates to the rural home.] These 
subjects should be included in the course, 
even if their inclusion should make necessary 
the elimination of Greek, Hebrew, Compar- 
ative Religion, or other subjects which are 
now a part of the theological course." * 

I may add, in my judgment — the result of 
some study of the rural church situation 
from the standpoint of the efficiency of the 
modern country minister — that these last- 
named courses are the "anise" and "cum- 
min," while the former are the "weightier 
matters" of training for rural ministers that 
we should have done and not to have left the 
others undone. 

In many prosperous rural communities 
to-day the church has failed to meet the 
needs of the situation and hold the people 
to the church, not because of the lack of an 
educated ministry, but because in so many 

1 See Church and Country Life, pp. 167, 168. 

90 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

instances the minister has lacked the kind of 
training that would fit him for the modern 
task. To illustrate : I dropped into a church 
some time ago at a certain place, between 
trains, and heard a certain minister, a grad- 
uate of a college and of a theological sem- 
inary, preach his morning sermon, and so far 
as I could judge the sermon was a feeble re- 
production of an effort in homiletics of per- 
haps thirty years ago, and had no more rela- 
tion to the needs of the people of that par- 
ticular community than the mummery of an 
Indian medicine man would have on a 
modern case of appendicitis, 

IV. Additional Qualifications Needed 

The rural minister of to-day must in ad- 
dition to his theological training be qualified 
in the following essentials of rural leader- 
ship : 

1. He must be able to sense the needs of 
his community. He must know how to make 
a rural social survey of his entire parish and 
make an inventory of its assets and liabilities, 
so that he will know how to treat each case of 
need whether it requires negative or positive 
treatment. He should know all about his 

91 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

people in order to serve them in the most ef- 
fective way. 

2. He should know how to construct a pro- 
gram of work in community-building so as 
to meet the adolescent impulse of his young 
people to do something. Unless this impulse 
is given some constructive channel of expres- 
sion, he will find his young people absent 
from his church, and often leaving the com- 
munity for other fields of adventure, ending 
sometimes in the experience of the prodigal 
son. He should be able to chart the results 
of the community study in such a construc- 
tive way that all the members of his parish 
could see the needs of the community, and 
relate themselves in helpful ways to a con- 
structive program of work for the commu- 
nity as a whole. He should organize the 
recreational and play life of the community 
under wholesome religious supervision in 
order to counteract the harmful influence of 
the uncensored play life of the towns that so 
often draws the young people of the coun- 
tryside. 

3. He should be trained in the art of social 
engineering in order to get people to work 
together in groups without friction. He 

92 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

should know how to organize team work for 
the entire community. The selection of the 
personnel of group leadership ; the essentials 
of team play where personal or group ad- 
vantage is submerged in the consciousness 
of the larger community aim ; and the organ- 
ization of mass movements to develop the 
community consciousness and to encourage 
the teams when the tug of the load is the 
hardest. 

4. He must be industrious in the face of 
discouragement, and win to himself a group 
of men who will stand by him when all others 
fail to understand his program and refuse to 
help. It is the pull at the top of the hill that 
is the hardest and the most severe test of a 
team. When learning to ride a bicycle the 
essential thing to keep in mind is to work the 
pedals; so when your plans for the parish 
seem to go wabbling, and you begin to see a 
"spill" ahead of you, then is the time to keep 
the wheels under your program moving by 
indefatigable industrious effort which will 
insure success. 

5. The rural minister must keep always in 
mind the other fact that his work is only a 
part, yet a very important part, of the larger 

93 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

task of bringing the Kingdom upon earth, 
and that in serving well in his community he 
is making himself eligible for the larger 
ranges of responsible service. 



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SERVING THE COMMUNITY 



CHAPTER VIII 

TEAM WORK FOR THE RURAL 
COMMUNITY 

At the outset we must distinguish be- 
tween team work for the community and 
team work in the community. We have seen 
a great deal of team work done in the com- 
munity which left the community as a whole 
and the individual family worse off than be- 
fore — for example, the little group of poli- 
ticians who run the politics of the rural dis- 
tricts and award to themselves or their 
friends the contracts for public work, and 
pocket the rake-off. Again we have seen the 
saloon interest defeat the wishes of the ma- 
jority who desired to get rid of the drink 
evil. Also we have seen even the churches, 
the lodge, the Grange, or some other organ- 
ization act in a way that gave the impression 
that they were more interested in the pros- 
perity of the organization as such than the 
good of the whole community which they 
were supposed to serve. 

95 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

I. The Essentials of Team 
Organization 

1. The Question of Ability. The team 
work of the community must be done by 
men and women of ordinary ability. While 
it is assumed that team work to be successful 
must have efficient leaders and directors, yet 
the bulk of the load must be lifted by ordi- 
nary men and women, and the problem of 
social work for the community is to get the 
rank and file of the plain people to work to- 
gether for the achievement of a common 
task. 

2. The Basis of Your Project. Your pro- 
ject must be put on a moving basis. You 
cannot get a team of horses to pull long on a 
thing that doesn't move, that is, a dead 
weight. You must hitch them to something 
on wheels, or they will soon balk. Now, the 
trouble with some of our schemes for the 
community is not with the people, but with 
the directors who have not set their proposi- 
tions on a moving basis. Their plans have 
no wheels under them. The wheels seem to 
be in the heads of the directors; in other 
words, successful team work for the com- 

96 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

munity must have not only the cooperative 
effort of the many, but also a well-articu- 
lated plan that can be worked. 

3. The Essentials in Team Play. We are 
familiar with team work in a college com- 
munity. Here efficiency in team work de- 
pends upon three factors: (1) the personnel 
of the team, (2) training in team play, (3) 
encouragement on the side lines — for ex- 
ample, mass meetings to arouse college 
spirit, a rooters' association to lead the cheer- 
ing when it goes badly with the home team. 

So in social work for a community the first 
requirement for efficiency in team work is the 
choice of social workers, especially the lead- 
ers of institutional work who have the right 
qualities of personality and can be depended 
upon to work with the other folks. This ap- 
plies to those who are to hold elective offices 
as well as to those who hold appointive posi- 
tions in community service. It applies to 
religious, educational, philanthropic, and 
charitable work as well as to civic tasks and 
governmental responsibilities in the com- 
munity. 

In the next place it requires that leaders 
in these lines of community work should 

97 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

learn team play. Practice the art of sup- 
porting each other and work together for 
the common good and the glory of the com- 
munity rather than for the selfish ends of 
personal glory, or partisan pride and ad- 
vantage. 

It involves also the development of an in- 
telligent organized public opinion that rep- 
resents the real good of the community as a 
whole, as well as the weal of all the constitu- 
ent social factors, individuals or groups, that 
make up the community. It means the com- 
munity must be socialized in consciousness 
before it can become thoroughly socialized in 
activity. 

II. How to Organize Team Work tor 
the Community 

1. Theological Extension. Hold a confer- 
ence in some center of the rural districts of 
the Annual Conference. Choose men to 
speak on practical subjects in the theological 
seminaries of the various denominations and 
from the State College of Agricultural Ex- 
tension and Home Economics. Enlarge the 
scope of your conferences. One of the best 
ways to prepare the community for team 

98 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

work is to enlarge the range of our confer- 
ences. It used to be the custom when a con- 
ference on any public question was to be 
held, to call together only those who were 
directly labeled as belonging to the specific 
group. Now, however, when a conference 
is held, we invite representatives (leaders, 
or "key men") from every group in the com- 
munity affected, for we have learned in social 
work that no group liveth unto itself. 

2. Examples of Team Work. Let me 
give some examples of this new phase of 
team work for the community. 

( 1 ) The State colleges of agriculture have 
developed a lot of technique in agricultural 
science for the rural communities for a given 
region, but it would amount to but little un- 
less they could get the farmers to apply it; 
so to-day they are holding conferences, con- 
ventions, institutes, etc., to which are invited 
the leaders in rural education, the pastors of 
community churches, the experts in federal 
and State bureaus, and also the plain com- 
mon people who are interested in dairying, 
poultry-raising, animal husbandry, domestic 
science, farming, trucking, and any other 
useful employment in rural life in order that 

99 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

they may effectively serve the whole rural 
region. 

(2) When the County Work Department 
of the Young Men's Christian Association 
holds a conference on rural leadership, it in- 
vites experts in all these fields of rural 
science, together with leaders in organized 
play in the open country, country preachers, 
and Sunday school workers; and even pro- 
fessors in theological seminaries are invited 
to come and learn something of what is 
really taking place in the world. 

(3) We held a conference at Drew Theo- 
logical Seminary at Madison, New Jersey, 
some time ago and the program included 
every topic of interest to a rural community 
except theology. The chief speakers were 
experts in rural education, agricultural 
science, rural extension work, experts in the 
study of plant pests and diseases and how to 
get rid of them, workers in State charities 
and correction, Sunday school and home mis- 
sion specialties, rural pastors and laymen. 
Why did we invite all these? Because we 
know that the country church cannot succeed 
without the intelligent cooperation of all 
these rural forces in building up a lasting 

100 



SERVIXG THE COMMUNITY 

rural civilization that will be essentially 
Christian. 

3. Social Nature of Conduct. We must 
show the people of the community in an im- 
pressive way the social nature of conduct, by 
giving to them correct examples of actual 
good achieved by scientific forms of social 
service. It is not sufficient to have in mind 
the words of the Ritual with respect to the 
"world," the "flesh," and the "devil"; we 
must make the people see the concrete ex- 
amples of their activities in the community 
where they live before they will be suffi- 
ciently aroused to do any organized work 
for the real improvement of the community. 

4. Specific Tasks for Team Work. We 
must outline specific tasks for team work 
such as : ( 1 ) The need for the promotion of 
public health, the study of the causes, meth- 
ods of prevention and treatment of social 
diseases. (2 ) Team work for the prevention 
of juvenile crime and delinquency. The 
study of the social causes of the boy problem 
— leading to the responsible factors of the 
family, the church, and the community for 
its solution. (3) The need for a study of the 
industrial unrest in mining camps and in the 

101 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

fruit regions, the hop industry, as well as 
farming, with a view to the solution of the 
problem. (4) Team work in getting the 
churches together instead of spending their 
energies in overlapping and wasting their 
economic resources in trying to solve the 
problems of the Kingdom. 



102 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 



CHAPTER IX 

LOCAL RURAL INSTITUTIONS 

AND THEIR RESPONSIBILITY 

TO THE COMMUNITY 1 

All life to-day that is human is fast be- 
coming socialized both in consciousness and 
in activity. We see this process of social- 
ization going on more actively in cities and 
towns than in rural districts. The reason 
for this is that cities and towns are better or- 
ganized, and the population groups are in 
closer contact than those of the rural regions. 

Comparative isolation in the open country 
in the past, and in many quarters even to- 
day, has made it impossible to develop a com- 
munity consciousness and to organize the 
people in an effective way for community ac- 
tion. Mr. Clarence Poe, editor of the Pro- 
gressive Farmer (Raleigh, North Caro- 
lina), has pointed out that "Country people 
are in heart and mind just as progressive as 



Pamphlet No. 19. (Moravian Country Church Commis- 
sions.) By Edwin L. Earp. 

103 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

city people, but have not the facilities for 
expressing the spirit of progress. The 
power belt of organization has not been at- 
tached to the throbbing dynamo of rural as- 
piration." 

Mr. George W. Russell, writing in the 
Irish Homestead, shows the elemental weak- 
ness of country life when he says that "While 
we have had people living here and there in 
rural sections heretofore, we have not had 
rural communities" While in many pro- 
gressive States, in the Middle West, for ex- 
ample, rural life has become organized, yet 
it is still true that many of the local organ- 
izations and institutions are individualistic 
and selfish in their relation to the commu- 
nity, and, like a certain political group in one 
of our great Eastern cities, are working for 
their own pockets all the time. 

Whenever any organization or institution 
has reached a stage where most of its ener- 
gies are put forth to maintain its own ex- 
istence rather than perform a service to the 
community, it has forfeited its right to be 
called a community organization; in other 
words, the most vigorous organizations are 
those which have as their real object the 

104 



SERVIXG THE COMMUNITY 

doing of work that counts for something in 
the community apart from the existence and 
maintenance of the organization itself. 

In discussing this important topic we 
should first define the term "rural com- 
munity"; second, we should state the char- 
acteristic institutions that we find in such a 
community, and, third, show what consti- 
tutes their responsibility as individual 
groups and as an organized league of all 
rural social organizations, for the good of the 
community as a whole. In all we shall as- 
sume the spiritual leadership of the rural 
church. 

I. What Is a Rural Community? 

There are several types of population 
groups in country life. 

1. Homes. Many are isolated and de- 
tached from any rural center. The only 
social interest they have is expressed at 
the church, the mill, the blacksmith shop, 
the country schoolhouse, and the country 
store. 

2. Neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are 
made up of more or less homogeneous groups 
of the rural population, and often named 

105 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

after the leading family, such as Brown- 
ville, Smithville, Pottstown, or Hills Cor- 
ner. Sometimes they are made up of social 
groups of the red men, the Negroes, or im- 
migrants. 

3. The Community. The community is 
made up of all the homes and all the groups 
that seek to meet at some common center to 
promote the welfare of the entire popula- 
tion. These entities plan together to meet 
the common needs, such as food, clothing, 
implements, education, religion, recreation, 
and friendly association. The center of such 
a community is usually a village or town hav- 
ing a population of from a few hundred to 
two or three thousand, its area covering sev- 
eral square miles. 

The people living in these centers are serv- 
ing the people of outlying homes on the 
farms, or are there for residence as retired 
agriculturalists, and are in turn served by 
the farmers, who bring their farm products 
to the village or town markets. Professor 
C. J. Galpin has put it thus: "The village 
center is the pantry, safe, shop, medicine 
chest, playhouse, altar of the community at 
large. The village homes, in thus serving 

106 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

the scattered homes of the rural population 
as social agents of trade, education, health, 
amusement, etc., are distinctly a part of the 
country community itself." 1 

We must not forget that a mere collec- 
tion of dwelling houses with their occupants 
does not make a community. The word 
"community" signifies a population group 
which has become socially conscious and is 
working together as one body to satisfy the 
common needs, desires, ambitions, and ideals. 
The highest task a rural worker has to-day 
is to awaken the people of a given territory 
to the consciousness of themselves as a unit 
capable of acting together ; to the conscious- 
ness of the power to get what they need, and 
what is their just share of the products of 
their labor. 

We must, therefore, distinguish between 
the popular use of the term "rural commu- 
nity" and the real community that is social- 
ized in consciousness and activity. We are 
here reminded of the boy who, when asked 
if his father was a Christian, replied, "Yes, 
but he isn't working at it." So we have 

1 See Circular of Information No. 29, University of Wis- 
consin, Agricultural Experiment Station, Madison, Wisconsin. 

107 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

many so-called communities that are not en- 
gaged in any real cooperative activity 
through team work by the local institutions 
for the community at large. 

II. When Is a Community a Com- 
munity? 

To use a form of interrogation first 
adopted by some Celtic member of a sub- 
ordinate bureau of the Department of Agri- 
culture in carrying out the Pure Food Act, 
"When is whisky whisky?" we would an- 
swer as follows: 

A community is socialized when, awak- 
ened to the consciousness of its needs, it has 
developed adequate organization of its popu- 
lation, invented efficient social machinery, 
and trained effective social engineers, to 
make use of its available resources for all the 
people within the community, so that they 
will be in possession of that equality of op- 
portunity which means, not the ability to 
secure control of resources and exploit them 
for personal or corporate ends, but the 
equality of opportunity for each to secure a 
just share of the products of industry 
through distribution according to the meas- 

108 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

lire of services rendered; in other words, a 
community is a community when it has de- 
veloped adequate social machinery to con- 
nect human needs with available resources. 

This process of the socialization of our 
rural domain is being carried on by many 
agencies to an extent unknown to many, yet 
most encouraging to those who have been 
the pioneers in this great national movement 
for the betterment of country life. 

III. Social Rural Institutions That 
Have Responsibility to the Com- 
munity 

In listing the local rural institutions in the 
study of a community, we must consider 
them in two general classes : ( 1 ) Those that 
have become permanent factors in commu- 
nity building and are a part of the social 
body, so to speak, such as the home, the 
school, the church; and (2) Those that are 
voluntary and purposive and may change 
with changing social needs ; for example, the 
Grange, the farmers' clubs, farmers' unions, 
institutes, cooperative enterprises, etc. Some 
of these have economic and political, and 
others social and cultural aims. They are 

109 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

sometimes called the allies of the country 
church. 

It is possible to discover sections of the 
country where all of these institutions and 
associations are working without any definite 
ideas of community responsibility whatso- 
ever, and some of them would impress you 
by their pleas for support, as though they 
existed to be served by the community rather 
than to do service for the community. I 
found on looking through the program for 
the "Farm and Home Week," at the State 
College, Manhattan, Kansas, that there 
were eight or ten State associations listed 
with their exhibits, some or all of which may 
function in the local communities. 

We will take up for consideration here 
only those local rural institutions which 
have become integral parts of our rural civili- 
zation, through which the church, in large 
measure, must work to serve the community, 
and see if they all have that sense of re- 
sponsibility for the community that will 
function in the building up of a new rural 
civilization and result in a more satisfactory 
life for people on the farms and in country 
towns. 

110 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

1. The Rural Home — Its Social Func- 
tion. The rural home is the dwelling place 
and the training school of more than one 
half of the population of this country. The 
home lif e is of vital importance to the nation 
as well as to the State and local community 
in the character of its output. The majority 
of the criminals in our penal institutions are 
boys who come from the cities and large 
towns. Eighty-five per cent of our Chris- 
tian ministers come from rural homes and 
more than one half of the great leaders in 
industry, finance, business, and in educa- 
tional, legal, and political professions, now 
vocationally occupied in cities, were born and 
bred in rural communities. The chief func- 
tion of the home is the nurture and develop- 
ment of character in the family group, not 
for the sake of the family name alone, but 
for service to society. The family, there- 
fore, has an interest in everything that con- 
tributes to the attainment of this aim, and 
likewise should be opposed to everything 
that would destroy character and hinder its 
development. We see, therefore, that from 
the mere standpoint of self-interest the rural 
home has a responsibility to the community. 

Ill 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

Therefore every improvement in home-mak- 
ing, in domestic science, in home planning, 
and in health and domestic happiness, is by 
the sociological law of imitation, f ulfilling an 
obligation to the community as a whole. To 
love your neighbor as yourself is not only 
fulfilling half the law and the prophets, but 
is also good social insurance. 

2. The Rural School. The object of the 
rural school is the education of the pupil 
for self-realization and vocational oppor- 
tunity in society. But we are coming to see, 
in these days when agriculture has become 
a science and many phases of rural life are 
becoming technically professional, that the 
function of the rural school is to relate the 
children of the open country more vitally to 
the actual conditions in which they are to 
live, move, and have their being in the com- 
munity. The trouble in the past has been 
that the text books in rural schools were seri- 
ously lacking in wholesome rural-mindedness 
on the part of their writers. The viewpoint 
of the author was either too sentimentally 
reminiscent, like "The Old Oaken Bucket" 
or "The Little Brown Church in the Vale" 
songs, or unpractically optimistic, like a fer- 

112 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

tilizer advertisement or a real estate prospec- 
tus of swamp lands in Florida. 

The rural mind has been too individualis- 
tic in its outlook and too narrow in its hori- 
zon. The rural school, whether a one-room 
school at the crossroads or the consolidated 
school at the community center, should seek 
to develop, first, a wholesome respect for 
the land as a resource field of the nation's 
wealth, a love for all God's creatures that 
grow in the open country, and through 
nature study to know the meaning of the 
struggle for existence and man's relation to 
that struggle. When this is done the rural 
population as a whole will come to value the 
land and its resources as a great economic 
and sociological fact. 

The rural high school, and even the grade 
school, in a community center, has a chance 
to develop through class rivalry, and what 
we call in higher institutions of learning, 
"college spirit," a helpful social cleavage, 
and thus lay the foundation for cooperative 
and organized activities. 

Here in the open country, where the young 
people have a chance to see things produced 
by patient toil and husbandly in cooperation 

113 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

with the processes of nature, and where they 
have time to think things through, and 
where God has a chance to speak by the still 
small voice that has urged many a youth of 
the countryside to undertake great things 
— here should be taught and wrought into 
the very fiber of our being the great founda- 
tion principles of all enduring democracies, 
namely :— -Honor to all men who do the nec- 
essary work of the world ; a heart interest in 
human brotherhood and in man's organized 
struggle against poverty and in his fight for 
social justice; recognition of the super- 
natural — God immanent in his creation ; and 
respect for authority and for law and order 
in the community. 

3. The Church and Sunday School. There 
has been developed a great change in the 
consciousness of church leaders with respect 
to the function of the church in the com- 
munity. The emphasis in times past has 
been upon intake. From now on it will be 
upon output. Like the laborers in the para- 
ble, too many church members are idle in 
the marketplace of Christian service for the 
community because no man has hired them. 
Too many folks are shouting "Harvest 

114 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

Home!" in the church building when they 
ought to be hustling in the harvest fields of 
service for the community. 

So in the Sunday schools, the emphasis 
in the past has been on the subject-matter 
of the lesson rather than on the boys and 
girls and the field in which they are to do 
their work. To-day the emphasis in reli- 
gious education is upon the boy and girl, 
that they may develop powers for service 
in the community as well as prepare their 
souls for heaven. 

What, then, is the function of the church 
in the rural community? Here is the an- 
swer: 

( 1 ) To acquaint all the people with God. 

(2) To bring to the consciousness of men 
the idea of the kingdom of God upon earth. 

( 3 ) The socialization of the community in 
its religious consciousness and activity. 

(4) Through the Adult Bible Class of the 
Sunday school it is to put into conduct for 
the community the moral and religious truths 
of the Bible used as a text-book. 

4. The Christian Associations. The chief 
service of these associations is to develop co- 
operation in religious work for the com- 

115 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

munity of rival denominational groups, 
to furnish a binder for the unmixable yet 
useful elements of Protestant Christianity, 
and ultimately for all the larger groups of 
the Christian faith. 

5. Farmers' Clubs and Like Organiza- 
tions. The social function of these local in- 
stitutions in rural communities includes the 
following: 

( 1 ) To furnish a basis for mass movement 
and group action of isolated units of the 
rural population such as is necessary, for 
instance, when some epidemic like foot-and- 
mouth disease among cattle, or hog cholera, 
or plant pests and diseases affecting large 
areas of the rural domain, is discovered. 

(2) For protection against the exploiters 
of the farmers — the unscrupulous middle- 
men. Developing trained citizens to care for 
the interests of the farmer and the rural in- 
dustries in the community. This gives the in- 
dividual farmer the sense of security in the 
presence of organized exploitation. 

(3) These clubs develop a more mobile 
and intelligent electorate to meet the chang- 
ing issues of political policies. 

(4) They make possible organized dis- 

116 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

tribution of farm products to advantageous 
markets by shipping in bulk by railroad in- 
stead of the long haul by wagon. 

(5) They make possible a better financial 
situation through cooperative banking and 
loan systems and insurance against loss. 

(6) Through discussion and debate and 
interchange of ideas in neighborly discussion 
they develop the power of self-expression, 
and furnish a chance for the development 
of native rural leadership. 

(7) They have developed a wholesome 
class-consciousness among farmers, so that 
they no longer resent the jibes of the urban- 
ites, such as "hayseed," "Rube," and Uncle 
"Johnny," but rather feel the sense of power 
and community solidarity. 

IV. Responsibility of Local Rural In- 
stitutions to the Community 

What, Then, Is the Responsibility of 
These Local Rural Institutions to the Com- 
munity? 

In the first place, I would offer a word of 
caution in our eagerness to organize the 
rural social forces into class-conscious 
groups. Class-consciousness is a good thing 

117 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

if you develop with it social sympathy. It 
would be just as immoral and harmful to the 
nation for the rural forces to fleece Wall 
Street, as it has been for Wall Street to 
fleece the farmer. What we need is the de- 
velopment of social sympathy, the widening 
of the range of our human regard, the breed- 
ing up of human acquaintanceship between 
all rival groups, the socialization of all our 
community life until we can see with open 
eyes the kingdom of God on earth, and feel 
in our hearts the spirit of human brother- 
hood which gives to mankind a sense of 
security in all human relationships and a 
sense of joy in all human toil; where men no 
longer insist so much on their rights as they 
do upon performing their duties to God and 
their fellow men. 



118 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 



CHAPTER X 

THE NEXT STEP IN THE RURAL 
LIFE MOVEMENT 

Constructive social change in any move- 
ment comes very slowly, only step by step. 
We see much movement, much action, but 
often little progress. This is because the 
whole mass has to be moved before you can 
say there has been any advance. So in the 
Rural Life movement there has been much 
discussion, many conferences, many conven- 
tions, many surveys and reports of commis- 
sions, but few steps forward. We have been 
dealing with more than one half the popu- 
lation of this great country, and, as some of 
us believe, the "better half." So we need not 
be discouraged by the little advance made 
when we consider the greatness of the mass 
we are trying to move. The report of the 
Commission on Country Life in 1908, 
printed by the Spokane Chamber of Com- 
merce in 1910, brought the whole rural 

119 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

domain up into the consciousness of the 
American people like a new continent. Since 
then we have been able to view the whole 
movement in its stages reaching back over 
fifty years since the Civil War, and now 
we can mark these stages as steps forward; 
and, getting the line of movement and the 
gait, we are able to predict with certainty 
what the next step in this great movement is 
going to be, or ought to be. 

I. Previous Steps in the Rural Life 
Movement 

1. Scientific Farm Production. The first 
step may be called the step for scientific farm 
production. This was the period when the 
great agricultural institutions were founded 
for the purpose of educating men in the 
science of farm production and cattle-breed- 
ing — the selection of stocks and grades of 
cattle and grain, and their improvement 
through the laws of heredity and environ- 
ment. 

The time when we got rid of the slab-sided 
breed of hogs, and the long-horned, raw- 
boned cattle, and the hat-rack, knock-kneed, 
flea-bitten, gray breed of horses, and intro- 

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SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

duced the finer, larger breeds for market, 
dairy, and farm purposes with the view to 
the maximum of quality and quantity with 
the same outlay for maintenance during the 
productive period. 

The same ideas were applied to the study 
of soils, the selection and rotation of crops, 
and the variation of crops to suit the seasons 
and markets after the range of the market, 
through transportation, had been greatly ex- 
tended. 

2. The Popular Political Phase. The 
second step was that known as the popular 
political phase, when great organizations like 
the Grange, the Farmers' Alliance, and the 
Farmers' Union were organized, and the 
needs of the farmer were vocalized in politi- 
cal speeches, and expressed in party plat- 
forms. 

The period when some "favorite son" who 
had gone to Congress on the wave of this 
popular uprising sent back to his constitu- 
ents packages of free seeds which, like his 
political ideas, never sprouted, or if they did, 
brought forth nothing but leaves. 

3. The Commercial Social Phase. The 
third step may be called the commercial so- 

121 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

cial phase, which is now well developed 
toward cooperative activities through State 
and federal institutions with local commu- 
nities in getting the results of research and 
scientific experimentation into the actual 
methods of farm production, marketing, and 
improvement of living conditions in the open 
country. This is the period of extension 
work of the colleges and schools of agricul- 
ture and the establishment of the Farm 
Bureau, and Rural Extension Boards to put 
into actual use the knowledge gained in the 
experiment stations and the great labora- 
tories provided by the State and the federal 
government Department of Agriculture. 

Yet there seems to be something wrong 
with the movement. Men are asking why 
the farmers and the rural industrial workers 
do not have a more satisfying life. In some 
of the richest farming districts the farms are 
being let out to tenants or sold to the specu- 
lator, and the old reliable stock of the homo- 
geneous American people is drifting to the 
towns and cities and other racial stocks are 
taking their places. 

This leads us to inquire, What is the next 
step in the Rural Life movement? 

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SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

II. The Next Step 

1. Rural Social Engineering. We might 
denominate it in a general way "Rural So- 
cial Engineering," or "The Improvement of 
Rural Life." 

We need to develop by wise leadership in 
the open country a better type of community 
life. We must give the farmer folk the actu- 
al means for realizing their aspirations for a 
more satisfying community life. 

Leaders in the Rural Life movement have 
discovered that it is not a matter merely of 
making money on the farm — this is only half 
the problem — for it has been shown by Pro- 
fessor Carver, head of the Rural Organ- 
ization Service, cooperating with the De- 
partment of Agriculture at Washington, 
that the sections of the country where the 
land is richest, where crops have been most 
abundant, where land has reached the high- 
est price and the farmers attain to the high- 
est degree of prosperity, are the very sec- 
tions from which the farm owners are retir- 
ing from the farms most rapidly and leaving 
them to tenants." 1 



1 See Conference Charities and Correction, 1914, p. 85. 
123 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

The next step must, therefore, be more 
than merely enriching the farmer. It must 
be that and more. It must result in putting 
the occupation of farming on the basis of a 
"pleasure economy" instead of a "pain econ- 
omy," as it has been so often heretofore, with- 
out adequate organization of rural life. It 
must become, in general, a life of surplus 
rather than a lif e of deficit for the individual 
farm family life. 

2. Planks for Its Footing. This step must 
have prepared for it by scientific social engi- 
neering the following planks for its footing: 

( 1 ) Efficiency in Farm Production. This 
will mean better farming in the full sense of 
that term. Our State institutions and local 
farm extension bureaus, and the work of 
graduates of our agricultural colleges pro- 
ducing imitation centers in every community 
where farming, trucking, dairying, and 
other lines of farm production are possible, 
will bring this about. 

(2) Cooperative Farm Marketing. 
There is needed a cooperative and well-or- 
ganized system of farm marketing, so that 
the actual producers may receive a larger 
share of the profits which now, in too many 

124 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

cases, go to the middleman and benefit 
neither the consumer nor the producer. 

(3) Rural Credits and Banking. A well- 
organized system of rural credits, or bank- 
ing, for local community as well as for the 
farm region should be created. This must 
be based upon sound principles of finance 
and must rest primarily upon the integrity 
of the farmers themselves, yet in times of 
special stress it must have the protection and 
the support of the state or federal govern- 
ment banking system. This will lead to the 
passing of the farm mortgage and the farm 
tenant. 

(4) Reorganization of Farm Household. 
There should be a reorganization of the farm 
household and the smaller farm industries 
so as to help farm women and keep on the 
farm some of the young women and men 
who ought to stay in the open country. 
There is needed some system of relief to 
mothers in the country who too often are 
being overburdened with care at the very 
age when they ought to be released from 
such toil. 

(5) Better School Organization. The 
better organization of our rural schools to 

125 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

suit the needs of farm folk is necessary. Let 
recognition be given to the cultural value of 
nature study and a proper appraisal be ac- 
corded the unused educational resources of 
country and town. Let us utilize the aesthet- 
ics of nature portrayed in the rich and varied 
coloring and form of fruits, foliage, and 
landscape. 

(6) A Reorganized Country Church. 
Make the reorganized country church a com- 
munity center to serve the whole community 
rather than an institution to be served by the 
community. 

III. How Can We Take this Next 
Step? 

The local farmers' clubs must be the 
foundation of community organization. The 
step must be taken consciously with our 
community eyes open. We must therefore 
provide the machinery for developing a com- 
munity life and activity as a community. 

There should be in every community some 
kind of an organization which will represent 
the whole life of the people — the Grange, 
the Farmers' Union, the Farmers' Club, the 
Agricultural League, or what not. 

126 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

Supplementary to this form of organiza- 
tion there should be a community league to 
include all the activities of the community 
to supplement the work of the farmers' 
clubs, etc. Such a league usually embraces 
the following committees : 

1. Committee on Social Life. 

2. Committee on Educational Work. 

3. Committee on Farm Production. 

4. Committee on Marketing and Credits. 

5. Committee on Moral Conditions and 
Their Improvement. 

6. Committee on Health Conditions — 
Rural Hospital. 

7. Committee on Women's Work. 

This next step in the Rural Life move- 
ment while consciously taken for the im- 
provement of living in the open country, 
with an awakened rural consciousness and a 
strong rural organization, yet must be taken 
in the spirit of cooperation with the great in- 
dustrial and commercial centers of popula- 
tion, lest our new rural civilization become 
selfish rather than serviceable to the whole 
country of which it is so vital a part. 

When we have all come to recognize the 
127 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

sacredness of the soil, and the sacredness of 
human life, and the possibilities of progress 
in human development under the favor of 
Almighty God, and become firmly grounded 
in constructive human experience won in all 
ages by toil, then we may look back upon 
our socially developed rural domain, 
gemmed with the cities and towns that are 
nourished from mother earth; and we shall 
but be viewing the physical basis of that 
greater social structure which is the kingdom 
of God upon earth, wherein dwell all God's 
children in righteousness, peace, and joy. 



128 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CONSERVATION OF BOY 
LIFE IN THE OPEN COUNTRY 

I. The Problem of Conservation 

There are many items in the list of our 
national resources which need attention in 
any discussion of the problem of conserva- 
tion. 

1. Land. The land as a source of the na- 
tion's food supply is perhaps the most 
prominent just now owing to the world- war 
need for food. It is now considered a sin 
against God as well as a sin against society 
for any farmer to allow the soil to become 
depleted so that the next generation will be 
poorer in productive land values than when 
he inherited the land from his ancestors. 

2. Forests. Our national forests as a 
source of supply of wood pulp for paper 
manufacture and as a source of building ma- 
terial is also a pressing problem of national 
conservation. 

129 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

3. Water Power. This problem is also 
closely connected with a third problem — that 
of our water power for the production of 
electrical energy, and hydraulic power for 
our manufacturing industries. It is also 
closely related to the problem of water 
supply for purposes of irrigation and mois- 
ture for farming regions of the great West, 
and to the prevention of floods in denuded 
watersheds of the great rivers of the Missis- 
sippi Basin. 

4. Mineral Resources. Still another prob- 
lem of conservation includes our natural gas, 
oil, coal, and other mineral resources which 
have such vital connection with our indus- 
tries, the use of our navy in times of war, 
the use of the automobile as a means of trans- 
portation and travel, the heating and light- 
ing of our homes and public buildings, 
and the movement of the volume of traffic 
over the railroads of the country and the 
great merchant marine so needful in times 
of war as well as in peace. These are all 
important and should not be underesti- 
mated in treating the problem of national 
conservation. 

5. Boy Life in the Open Country. But 

130 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

the greatest problem of national conserva- 
tion to-day is that of boy life in the open 
country. The human resources represented 
in the millions of young men and boys who 
are soon to become citizens endowed with the 
instincts and powers of personality, when 
properly educated and trained, will make 
manhood efficient and assure the future 
safety and glory of our country. 

II. A Citizen in the Making 

The farm boy is a citizen in the making, 
and as a class the farm boys have in them, 
because of their heritage and surroundings, 
the making of the very best type of citizen- 
ship in this or any other country. 

He is at the age of fourteen to eighteen a 
potential citizen. He is like a thoroughbred 
in training for the test of the race or the team 
as the case may be. He is training for pro- 
fessional or honorable occupational tasks for 
the constructive life of the community. He 
is a bundle of possibilities valuable to the 
community and the State. 

The conservation of the boy life of the 
country side is important for the nation to- 
day because as never before we need in this 

131 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

country a scientific agricultural production 
that can conserve the values of the soil while 
at the same time it increases the yield per 
acre of the necessary products for the feed- 
ing of the peoples of the earth. 

III. The Currents of Human Desire 

The farm boy, like other boys, has four 
great currents of human desire in his make- 
up, given him by his Creator. First, the de- 
sire to acquire property, which, if properly 
trained, leads to the production of wealth. 
Second, the desire for play, which, when 
normally encouraged and directed, develops 
into habits of work, conserves bodily sym- 
metry and health, and trains him in the es- 
sentials of social morality. Third, the sex 
desire, which leads to chivalrous conduct 
toward women, and when rightly controlled 
develops into love of home and family. 
Fourth, the desire for God which leads to 
worship and the sense of reverence for all 
that is holy, and the support of organized 
church life. 

When these fundamental boy instincts or 
desires are permitted to develop normally 
under proper leadership, they lead to the 

132 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

highest expressions of character which is the 
basis of all true citizenship. 

Therefore to become a citizen of the great- 
est value to society the boy must acquire the 
following traits of character: 

First, he must be an acquirer of property 
— a producer of economic values — wealth. 

Second, he must be a lover of wholesome 
recreation and a lover of work — the kind of 
work that builds up character as well as the 
community. 

Third, he must keep himself pure and be 
chivalrous to women, and recognize always 
the sanctity of sex. 

Fourth, he must be a worshiper of Al- 
mighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and a lover of righteousness and 
peace. 

IV. Chief Factors in the Conservation 
or Boy Life 

The chief factors in the conservation of 
this our greatest national resource are as fol- 
lows: (1) The Christian home, (2) The well- 
equipped school, (3) The organized church, 
(4) The socially awakened community. All 
these can be coordinated and harnessed by 

133 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

a well-directed church organization in a 
thriving community whether in the city, the 
suburbs, or in the open country, 1 

1. Provisional Measures. Provisional 
measures should receive the first and greater 
emphasis. These measures are : (1) Organ- 
ized play, (2) Vocational training, (3) 
Carefully guarded instruction in matters of 
sex, (4) Religious education under a well- 
organized graded system. 

2. Preventive Measures. Preventive meas- 
ures should not be neglected — in fact, in 
dealing with boy life, prevention is often the 
only method of saving the boy. These meas- 
ures should be organized to suit the needs of 
the community. Those that are most im- 
portant are: (1) Prevention of child labor, 
which means that the labor of the child in the 
play period of development should never be 
exploited for gain by parent or employer. 
(2) Prevention of social diseases — which 
means that the boy should be shielded from 
all those communicable diseases that are the 
results of unlawful contacts. (4) Preven- 
tion of traffic in immoral gain — the saloon, 

1 For a fuller treatment see "The Social Engineer," Earp, 
chapters xxii, xxiii, xxiv. 

134 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

the public dance hall, and the brothel should 
be banished from the reach of the boy life of 
America, as well as from other lands, if we 
would see the highest type of manhood de- 
veloped into the noblest citizenship of a 
world democracy that is to be the kingdom of 
God upon earth. 

3. Vision and Vitality Needed. To ade- 
quately promote these measures of conserva- 
tion of boy life the church of to-day must 
have a broader definition of its task and a 
more vital relation to the whole community. 

The task is made simple and effective by 
first knowing our community — its construc- 
tive and destructive forces ; second, in know- 
ing the simple principles of social organiza- 
tion and community service ; third, by outlin- 
ing a plan that can be worked by the men of 
the community under intelligent leadership, 
such as the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion is furnishing to-day in many parts of 
the rural field and of which the country 
churches in many parts of the land stand to- 
day so sorely in need, but which in the new 
day will be furnished and fully equipped by 
the reorganized methods of modern Home 
Missions Boards. 

135 



THE RURAL CHURCH 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND POS- 
SIBILITIES OF THE RURAL 
LIFE MOVEMENT 

I. What Has Been Achieved 

1. The Roosevelt Country Life Commis- 
sion lifted the rural problem into continental 
proportions in the consciousness of the 
American people. 

2. Most of the technique of scientific farm 
production has been worked out, but there 
remains the task of making this knowledge 
popular and practicable through agricul- 
tural extension work among the people. 

3. Cooperative farm production, market- 
ing, and rural credit and banking systems 
have passed the experimental stage. 

4. The farmer is an intelligent and moral 
factor in politics and will have to be reckoned 
with by all political parties in the future. 

5. Rural educational problems and re- 
sources have been newly appraised and will 

136 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

become a dominant question in national edu- 
cational organizations and councils. 

6. The country church is receiving the at- 
tention it deserves by the leading denomina- 
tions of North America, and will be more 
adequately manned in the future under reli- 
gious statesmanship. 

7. Rural health and recreation and moral 
conditions of rural neighborhoods are to-day 
testing the mental acumen of the philan- 
thropist and the social worker. 

8. Farm women have uttered their protest 
against the unsatisfying life of the rural 
population, as now organized. The study 
of home economics is as important as any 
other department of agricultural science and 
must be applied with equal zeal. 

9. Rural isolation has been remedied by 
the good-roads movement, the use of the 
automobile, the electric railway, the tele- 
phone, and the postal service, and in the next 
decade will be practically eliminated. 

10. Denominational overlapping and sec- 
tarianism in rural communities is being cor- 
rected by the coordinating work of the Chris- 
tian Associations and church federations 
under trained social leadership. 

137 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

II. Where We Need to Stress Our 

Rural Activities in the Next 

Decade 

1. Adequate training of rural leaders for 
the growing number and importance of voca- 
tional opportunities in the open country and 
rural towns. 

2. More adequate extension work to reach 
the people, who will never come to our col- 
leges, theological seminaries, and schools. 
Such extension work will change their habits 
of thought and uneconomic ways of doing 
things. 

3. Wise legislation that will assure social 
justice in the actual relations between the 
class-conscious groups of producers of farm 
products, the carriers of trade, and the con- 
sumers in cities and towns. 

4. Some efficient system of handling the 
problem of farm labor through the introduc- 
tion of rural industries to bridge the gaps of 
seasonal occupations, or by cheaper modes of 
transportation of farm laborers from one re- 
gion to another as the seasons change latitu- 
dinally. 

5. A settled rural ministry adequately 

138 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 

trained to serve the whole community, ade- 
quately supported and glad to stay and 
serve; a modified equipment in church 
building to meet community needs, and the 
organization of the Social- Center Parish 
plan to take the place of absentee pastorates 
of the old circuit system. 

6. The widening of the range of our hu- 
man regard, the breeding up of acquaint- 
anceship in wider circles of community 
populations, and the deepening of the sense 
of the oneness of our common Americanism. 

7. The conviction, born of our spiritual 
heritage as well as growing out of our con- 
scious needs, that the soil is the chief source 
of our economic values, and is to be treated 
as a trust from God to be used for the good 
of all the people, and that we must therefore 
hand it on to our children as productive as 
when we received it from other hands. 

8. Harnessing the rural social forces, eco- 
nomic and spiritual, through intelligent so- 
cial engineering, is the task of the rural lead- 
ers for the next decade. 

The Christian Associations, with a world 
vision and a community program that works, 
will be the strong ally of all the religious 

139 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

forces working with the State for the 
achievement of these worthy aims, which will 
result in not only a new rural civilization, but 
also, we hope, in a new world civilization in 
which righteousness and human sympathy 
will abound in peace and joy. 



140 



SERVING THE COMMUNITY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



THE RURAL CHURCH 

Ashenhurst, J. O. — The Day of the Country Church. 
Bricker, Garland A. — Solving the Country Church Problem. 
Brunner, Edmund de S. — The New Country Church 

Building. 
Butterfield, Kenyon L. — The Country Church and the 

Rural Problem. 
Gill, C. O., and Pinchot, Gifford — The Country Church. 
Jones, Edgar DeWitt — Fairhope. The Annals of a Country 

Church. 
Mills, Harlow S. — The Making of a Country Parish. 
Tipple, Ezra Squier — Some Famous Country Parishes. 
Tippy, Worth M. — The Church a Community Force. 
Vogt, Paul L. — The Church and Country Life. 
Wilson, Warren H. — The Church of the Open Country. 
Wilson, Warren H. — The Church at the Center. 
Association Press: Unifying the Rural Community. 

Country Church and Community Co- 
operation. 

Rural Church. 

Country Church and Rural Welfare. 

Rural Church Message. 

The Home of the Countryside. 

THE RURAL SCHOOL 

Eggleston and Bruere — The Work of the Country School. 
Carney, Mabel — Country Life and the Country School. 
Foght, Harold W. — The American Rural School. 

Rural Denmark and its Schools. 
Hart, Joseph K. — Educational Resources of Village and 
Rural Communities. 

141 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



RURAL ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY 

Bailey, Liberty H. — The Holy Earth. 

Sturgis & Walton Company — Commission on Country Life, 

Report of. 
Carver, Thomas Nixon — Principles of Rural Economics. 
Fiske, George Walter — The Challenge of the Country. 
Gillette, John M. — Constructive Rural Sociology. 
Plunkette, Sir Horace — The Rural Life Problem of the 

United States. 
Vogt, Paul L. — Introduction to Rural Sociology. 



142 



INDEX 

Boards of Home Missions, cooperation of, 68, 79; a definite 
plan of administration, 75; should adopt plan of foreign 
boards, 77; administrative responsibility of, 78; should 
establish scholarship, 87. 

Boy Life, conservation of, 130; chief factors in, 133. 

Carver, Professor, 59. 

Chart, carefully made, 61. 

Circuit system, the splendid old, 52. 

Community League, committees of, 127. 

Conference on Rural leadership, 15. 

Conservation, 126; land, 129; water power, 130; mineral 
resources, 130; boy life, 130. 

Cooperation, lack of, 37. 

Country Church, an economic and social force, 15. 

Economic factors, productive soil, 42; farm labor, 44; financial 
resources, 45. 

Farmers' Union, 20. 

Forces, destructive, 34; example of, 35. 

Goldberg, the cartoonist, 26. 

Human desire, the currents of, 132. 

Institutions, Rural, 103; have responsibility to the com- 
munity, 109; the rural home, 111; the rural school, 112; 
Church and Sunday School, 114; Christian Associations, 
115; Farmers' Clubs, 116. 

Isolation, 36. 

Leadership, ministerial, 16; keep up the standards of, 17; 
spiritual, that is intelligent, instructive, etc., 17; of a 
statesmanlike type, 20; need for a new type of, 21; where 
to come from, 24; potential, waste of, 38. 

Map, a total socialization, 28; school, 28; Sunday School, 28; 
tenant and owner, 28. 

Mathis, Mrs. G. H., 47. 

143 



INDEX 

Middleman, unscrupulous, 45. 

Milk Strike, 20. 

Movement, New Student Volunteer, 24, 25. 

Oberlin, John Frederick, 53. 

Piatt, Dr. Ward, 23. 

Poe, Clarence, 103. 

Psychological factors, mental attitude of people, 48. 

Rural Community, the term defined, 105-108. 

Rural folks, class conscious, 19. 

Rural Life Association, Ohio, 22. 

Rural Life Movement, rapidly becoming organized, 18; 

the next step in the, 119, 123; previous steps in, 120; 

achievements and possibilities of, 136. 
Rural ministers, classified, 83; qualifications needed, 91-94. 
Rural ministry, how recruited, 39; spiritually minded, 82. 
Rural population, the shifting of, 23. 
Russel, George W„ 104. 
Smith -Lever Agricultural Extension Act, 18; the purpose 

of, 19. 
Social sympathy, the development of, 20. 
Support, financial plan of, 67. 

Survey, how to make Rural Social, 26; should include, 30, 60. 
Tate, Professor W. K., 89. 
Team Work, 49; for the Rural Community, 95; efficiency 

in, 97; how to organize for community, 98; examples of, 99; 

specific tasks for, 101. 
Tenantry, yield of land under, 40. 
W T allace, Uncle Henry, 43. 



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